QU hosts Floyd’s family on webinar to discuss his legacy

When George Floyd’s aunt, Angela Harrelson, thinks about the way her nephew died, she said she realizes “he did die of bravery.”

“He wanted to live, he fought for eight minutes and 46 seconds. He did not want to give up,” said Harrelson said, as she and Floyd’s uncle, Selwyn Jones, spoke to the Quinnipiac University community during a Zoom webinar moderated by minister and activist Nyle Fort.

During the event, Harrelson and Jones recounted their nephew’s legacy and what his death means for Black Americans going forward.

Harrelson said, about her nephew fighting to live, “And when I actually thought about that, I said, ‘you know what, he didn’t die of dignity, but he did die of bravery,’ and that’s what got me going.”

Participants from the university on the virtual event submitted questions and shared thoughts with Harrelson and Jones. The open discussion detailed the broader narrative of Floyd’s life and death as a Black man while chronicling prejudicial norms, the fight against racism and what hope looks like.

Harrelson recalled how she first learned about her nephew’s death: A reporter called and asked her what she thought about the death of Floyd. She hung up the phone in disbelief, then saw it on her television moments later after seeing a blast of messages on her phone. She couldn’t process the protests immediately after his death because she was still sifting through her initial pain and anger, she said.

Floyd’s family remembers him as their beloved “Perry,” a darling boy, superstar football player and gentle giant — who made mistakes like any other person — but was a man who would give the shirt off his back to the next man or give up his last dollar. As of May 25, he is also remembered as “a person that took his last breath in the street of Minneapolis, Minnesota because of racism, hatred,” according to Jones.

Floyd was killed while being restrained by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, after being arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. He was handcuffed and pinned to the ground. Chauvin kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd pleaded for his life, yelling out, “I can’t breathe,” over and over until his last breath.

Floyd’s face and the sounds of him pleading for his life have covered screens and ignited outcries for justice while underlining pain felt by some for decades.

Harrelson said she jumped into activism to ensure Floyd’s legacy is not forgotten and to bring change.

Fort asserted that in many ways the story that all tell of Floyd articulates a “broader narrative of what it means to be Black in this country.” To Fort, George Floyd is a Black man caught in the throes of a systemic inequality like many others, including his own nephew.

“My nephew right now is serving 10 years in prison for essentially being young, Black, poor, growing up in the wrong neighborhood, and having a bad day,” said Fort. “I know so many people who did not grow up Black, poor and in the neighborhood he did, but instead of getting a cage got a counselor.”

NAACP research shows that Black Americans constituted “2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population in 2014.”

Racism and its residual impact do not manifest only in one regard, according to Fort. The problem is rooted in several institutions: housing, health care, education and more, not just police brutality or mass incarceration.

The reality means Black men and women have to be more careful than others, Harrelson and Jones said.

Harrelson believes some officers still act as if the fugitive slave act is still in play and have a “runaway slave mentality.”

“They’re going to be trigger happy because of the negative stereotype they already have programmed in their mind, it’s been going on for years. Are we supposed to stop and act like everything is OK as a Black person when the police is giving us a stop,” Harrelson added.

Harrelson and Jones said Black people have learned and taught each other that they must be more careful because of racial disparities.

“Normal” right now, according to Jones, is accepting that Black people have been and are living with the reality of their ancestors being raped, killed, lynchedand enslaved for hundreds of years. This normal is not what we want nor should we accept, Jones said, and has altered some people’s idea of hope as a result.

“Hope is white folks with badges stop abusing their authority and killing Black men. It is not Black man killing season, but it seems like it has been since my nephew was killed in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, by a guy who had no intentions of stopping,” Jones said. “Everybody’s hope is a little different than mine. ... I know that things have to change, because this ‘normality’ we’re going through ... is by far the saddest thing in the world.”