White Violence Links Black Lives From Emmett Till to George Floyd
From Emmett Till to Fred Hampton, George Floyd to Daunte Wright, and Rodney King to “This Is Us,” the “isolated incidents” are everywhere—and anything but isolated.
Philonise Floyd, speaking after his brother George’s murderer was found guilty by a jury, called Emmett Till “the first George Floyd.” Members of Till’s family, including his cousin Deborah Watts and her daughter — who attended Floyd’s memorial service — were reportedly on hand to support the Floyd family as they awaited a verdict for George’s killer that Emmett’s never received. Floyd also said the name of Daunte Wright, noting that history is present, justice is still not done, and we still have to demand that the system offer something approximating accountability.
“He should still be here,” Floyd said of Wright. “We have to always understand that we have to march. We will have to do this for life.”
It's not a coincidence that Wright, a Black 20-year-old who was killed by a Minnesota police officer, was once a student of a woman who dated George Floyd, who was also killed by a Minnesota police officer. Similarly, do not chalk up to inexplicable chance that a Black Army lieutenant whom police held at gunpoint and roughed up in December, Caron Nazario, was a relative of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a cop in 2014. And don’t consider it a fluke that the mother of Fred Hampton, killed at age 21 by state-backed police executioners in 1969, had babysat Emmett Till, a Black child lynched in 1955.