How the Trial Over Floyd’s Death Flipped the Script for Black Victims

George Floyd was presented as a full person, not just a body beneath a police officer’s knee. Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in his murder, remained an aloof figure.

MINNEAPOLIS — “His name,” the prosecutor said, “was George Perry Floyd Jr.” These seven words were the first the jury heard from Steve Schleicher, a prosecutor, in his closing argument in the trial of Derek Chauvin. With them Mr. Schleicher, standing in a bland Minneapolis courtroom, answered a call from the spirited streets 18 floors below, where protesters, for nearly a year, had been shouting a simple demand: Say His Name. Over the course of the three-week trial that ended last week with a murder conviction for Mr. Chauvin, a white former police officer whose victim was Black, race was rarely an explicit topic of discussion. And yet the presence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which demands that all Black people be seen for their full humanity, was felt throughout the proceedings.