abcnews.go.com
16.05.2022
Review: How George Floyd became an icon for Americans
“His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (Viking)Two Americas collided in the few minutes that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the neck of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, after a shopkeeper complained that the 6-foot-6 Floyd had passed a counterfeit $20 bill at a store.According to the new book “His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice,” Chauvin, a white, 5-foot-9 police veteran, had become a “cowboy” on patrol, a practitioner of rough policing tactics. He had grown up a child of divorced parents but attended good schools and found his way to policing after taking related college courses.Floyd’s childhood was starkly different.Floyd was a cheerful child, saying he wanted to “be someone” — a Supreme Court justice, for example.But just surviving the drug-infested, poverty-stricken, violence-prone neighborhood where he grew up was an accomplishment of note.