Tributes, tears flow for Floyd
‘He is going to change the world,’ brother says at emotional funeral
HOUSTON—George Floyd was lovingly remembered Tuesday as “Big Floyd” — a father and brother, athlete and neighbourhood mentor, and now a catalyst for change — at a funeral for the Black man whose death has sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.
More than 500 mourners wearing masks against the coronavirus packed a Houston church a little more than two weeks after Floyd was pinned to the pavement by a white Minneapolis police officer who put a knee on his neck for what prosecutors said was eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cellphone video of the encounter, including Floyd’s pleas of “I can’t breathe,” ignited protests and scattered violence across the U.S. and around the world, turning the 46-year-old Floyd — a man who in life was little known beyond the public housing project where he was raised in Houston’s Third Ward — into a worldwide symbol of injustice.
“Third Ward, Cuney Homes, that’s where he was born at,” Floyd’s brother, Rodney, told mourners at the Fountain of Praise church. “But everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world.”
The funeral capped six days of mourning for Floyd in three cities: Raeford, N.C., near where he was born.; Houston, where he grew up; and Minneapolis, where he died. The memorials have drawn the families of other Black victims whose names have become familiar in the debate over race and justice — among them, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin.
Following the service, Floyd’s golden casket was taken by hearse toward the cemetery in the Houston suburb of Pearland where he was to be entombed next to his mother, for whom he cried out as he lay dying. The casket was transferred to a glass-sided carriage drawn by a pair of white horses close to the graveyard.
In the past two weeks, amid the furor over Floyd’s death, sweeping and previously unthinkable things have taken place: Confederate statues have been toppled, and many cities are debating overhauling, dismantling or cutting funding for police departments.
Dozens of Floyd’s family members, most dressed in white, took part in the fourhour service. Grammy-winning singer Ne-Yo was among those who sang during the ceremony.
The mourners also included actors Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum, J.J. Watt of the NFL’s Houston Texans, rapper Trae tha Truth, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Houston police Chief Art Acevedo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who brought the crowd to its feet when he announced he will sign an executive order banning chokeholds in the city.
“I know you have a lot of questions that no child should have to ask, questions that too many Black children have had to ask for generations: Why? Why is Daddy gone?” former U.S. vicepresident Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, said, addressing Floyd’s sixyear-old daughter in a video eulogy at the service. “Now is the time for racial justice. That’s the answer we must give to our children when they ask why.”
Biden made no mention of politics. But other speakers took swipes at U.S. President Donald Trump, who has ignored demands to address racial bias and has called on authorities to crack down hard on lawlessness.
“The president talks about bringing in the military, but he did not say one word about eight minutes and 46 seconds of police murder of George Floyd,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights activist. “He challenged China on human rights. But what about the human right of George Floyd?”
“George Floyd was not expendable. This is why we’re here,” Democratic Rep. Al Green of Houston told the crowd. “His crime was that he was born Black. That was his only crime. George Floyd deserved the dignity and respect that we accord all people just because they are children of a common God.”