White people, in the United States, have been killing black people since the year 1619, when the first slaves arrived in the colony of Virginia. Since then slavery was institutionalized.
From 1619 slavery expanded through the Southern Colonies until the end of the Civil War in 1865.
But the violence against blacks didn’t end there. After the slaves were given their freedom, racial discrimination and violence against blacks continued nonstop.
But the United States is gaining a conscience. After the Assassination of George Floyd by a white police officer, there has been a new awakening. It’s almost as the video of the assassination, played hundreds of times, showed Americans how racist they really are and they didn’t like what they saw in the mirror.
On May 25, 2020, Derek Chauvin, a white policeman from the Minneapolis police department keeled on the neck of George Floyd for 9 minutes until he died. The murder was filmed by pedestrians and played in front of a global audience.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets. Protesters and police officers clashed in many cities. Corporations scrambled to issue statements affirming their commitments to racial equality. Athletes knelt during the national anthem.
The country both struggled to confront its history of racial division and continued to succumb to it. Americans saw new police killings greeted by fresh rounds of protests. Presidential candidates traded barbs over race, policing, law and order, and bias. And a former police officer’s trial left many across the country nervously glued to their television sets.
After the assassination, the four officers involved got fired, but that was not good enough.
Thousands of people talk to the streets to protest against police violence.
Derek Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Hundreds of thousands of people join largely peaceful demonstrations across the country, but some cities report hundreds of arrests after protesters clashed with the police and some areas are looted. National Guard troops are deployed in more than two dozen states.
It is the sixth day of nationwide unrest since the death of Mr. Floyd. Mayors have imposed curfews and several governors have mobilized the National Guard, but that has not quelled the widespread protests.
June 2020
June 1
Protesters are cleared for President Trump’s photo op.
Demonstrators who gathered outside the White House to protest police brutality are cleared from Lafayette Square in Washington by police officers and National Guard troops using flash-bang explosions, tear gas and other munitions. The area is cleared so that President Trump can have his picture taken holding a Bible outside St. John’s Church.
Demonstrators marching peacefully in Philadelphia enter a major highway and are trapped by police SWAT teams at the front and rear of the march. The authorities start using pepper spray and tear gas on the trapped protesters, who say they cannot breathe.
A nightly curfew is put in place in New York City.
June 2
Confederate symbols become a target of the protests.
A 131-year-old statue commemorating Confederate soldiers is taken down from public display in Alexandria, Va., one of more than 160 public symbols of the Confederacy that are removed or renamed in 2020 after the death of Mr. Floyd — more in the previous four years combined, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
June 3
New charges are laid against the Minneapolis officers.
Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota announces new charges in the death of Mr. Floyd: Second-degree murder for Mr. Chauvin, and aiding and abetting second-degree murder for the three other Minneapolis police officers who were present and failed to intervene.
June 4
Buffalo police officers are suspended after shoving 75-year-old protester.
Two Buffalo police officers are suspended without pay after a video shows them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury. Several other officers are seen walking by the man, motionless on the ground, without checking on him.
Hundreds of people gather at a Minneapolis chapel for a public memorial for Mr. Floyd, who is remembered as a friend and father and uncle to those closest to him, and also as a victim of racial injustice whose death in police custody drew legions of people into the streets.
In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam orders the removal of a towering statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond.
June 5
“Black Lives Matter” is painted near the White House.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington has city workers paint “Black Lives Matter” in giant yellow letters down a street near the White House that had been at the center of the confrontations between law enforcement and protesters.
The Marine Corps issues detailed directives about removing and banning public displays of the Confederate battle flag at Marine installations — an order that extends to mugs, posters and bumper stickers.
One of the founders of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, announces his resignation from the company’s board and encourages the company to find a Black candidate to replace him.
More than a dozen Black professional football players release a video calling on the N.F.L. to condemn the oppression of Black people and to apologize for not supporting players who protested peacefully.
June 6
The protests spread around the globe.
Tens of thousands of protesters turn out in Australia, Britain, France, Germany and other nations in support of U.S. protests against the death of Mr. Floyd, while denouncing racism in their own countries.
June 7
A majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledges to disband the Police Department.
A majority of the members of the Minneapolis City Council stand on a stage in a park above large block letters that read, “Defund Police,” as they pledge to dismantle the city’s Police Department. They promise to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of brutal treatment toward Black residents.
June 8
Protesters establish an “autonomous zone” in Seattle.
On the streets next to a police station in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, protesters and officers have spent a week locked in a nightly cycle of standoffs.
But facing a growing backlash over its dispersal tactics in the aftermath of Mr. Floyd’s death, the Seattle Police Department offers a concession: Officers would abandon their building, board up the windows and let the protesters have free rein outside. Protesters reverse the barricades to shield the liberated streets and lay claim to several city blocks, known at first as the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.”
Thousands of people line up for hours to view the body of Mr. Floyd in Houston, the city where he spent most of his life. The public viewing stretches for more than six hours and becomes not so much a rally or a protest, but an open-air memorial for a city’s fallen son.
June 9
A private funeral service is held for George Floyd.
At Mr. Floyd’s funeral at a southwest Houston church, he is remembered as the son, brother, uncle, and father that he was in life. Mr. Floyd, who grew up in a public housing complex in Houston’s predominantly Black Third Ward, was considered a native son.
Speaker after speaker invokes the political moment born out of what happened in Minneapolis, and the Rev. Al Sharpton delivers the eulogy.
On the same day, HBO Max removes from its catalog “Gone With the Wind,” the 1939 movie long considered a triumph of American cinema but one that romanticizes the Civil War-era South while glossing over its racial sins.
And Greg Glassman, the founder and chief executive of CrossFit, announces he will step down after posting a tweet that made light of both the coronavirus pandemic and the killing of Mr. Floyd.
June 10
NASCAR announces it will ban Confederate flags.
NASCAR says it will ban the Confederate battle flag from its events and properties, becoming the latest organization to reconsider the emblem’s place in American society.
Walmart commits to ending its practice of locking up African-American beauty care products in glass cases after a fresh round of criticism that the policy was a form of racial discrimination.
June 12
An Atlanta police officer fatally shoots Rayshard Brooks.
After Atlanta officers were called to the parking lot of a Wendy’s restaurant, an officer fatally shoots Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through lane. Mr. Brooks had struggled with the officers after they tried to arrest him for driving while intoxicated, and he took and fired one of the officers’ Tasers before an officer shot him in the back.
June 12
New York State bans chokeholds.
New York becomes one of the first states to take meaningful action to restrict police forces after Mr. Floyd’s death, banning the use of chokeholds and repealing a half-century-old law that has kept police disciplinary records secret.