George Floyd had been dead only hours before the movement began. Driven by a terrifying video and word-of-mouth, people flooded the South Minneapolis intersection where he was killed shortly after Memorial Day, demanding an end to police violence against Black Americans. The moment of collective grief and anger swiftly gave way to a yearlong, nationwide deliberation on what it means to be Black in America. First came protests, in large cities and small towns across the nation, becoming the largest mass protest movement in U.S. history. Then, over the next several months, nearly 170 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces. The Black Lives Matter slogan was claimed by a nation grappling with Floyd’s death. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Over the next 11 months, calls for racial justice would touch seemingly every aspect of American life on a scale that historians say had not happened since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. On Tuesday, Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who knelt on Floyd, was convicted of two counts of murder as well as manslaughter. The verdict brought some solace to activists for racial justice who had been riveted to the courtroom drama for the past several weeks. But for many Black Americans, real change feels elusive, particularly given how relentlessly the killing of Black men by the police has continued, including the recent shooting death of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb. There are also signs of backlash: Legislation that would reduce voting access, protect the police and effectively criminalize public protests has sprung up in Republican-controlled state legislatures. Otis Moss III, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, said to call what had transpired over the past year a racial reckoning was not right. “Reckoning suggests that we are truly struggling with how to re-imagine everything from criminal justice to food deserts to health disparities — we are not doing that,” he said. Tuesday’s guilty verdict, he said, “is addressing a symptom, but we have not yet dealt with the disease.” Moments before the verdict was announced, Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, called Floyd’s death “a Selma, Alabama, moment for America.” What happened in Selma in 1965 “with the world watching demonstrated the need for the passage of the 1965 Voting Right Act,” he said. “What we witnessed last year with the killing of George Floyd should be the catalyst for broad reform in policing in this nation.” The entire arc of the Floyd case — from his death and the protests through the trial and conviction of Chauvin — played out against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which further focused attention on the nation’s racial inequities: People of color were among those hardest hit by the virus and by the economic dislocation that followed. And for many, Floyd’s death carried the weight of other episodes of police violence over the past decade, a list that includes the deaths of Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown and
