His Name Is George Floyd
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After the murder of George Floyd, reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa spent months learning everything they could about Floyd\\u2019s life. The story they reveal in a new book shows how systemic racism shaped and shortened it.
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\\u201cHe\'s everywhere \\u2014 but he\'s not here. He\'s on somebody\'s wall. He\'s on somebody\'s billboard. \\u2026 He\'s in a newspaper, but he\'s not here. He\'s here in spirit. But he\'s not here.\\u201d
In the summer of 2020, after George Floyd was murdered, he became a symbol and a rallying cry. But what was missing in our understanding was the man himself \\u2014 a figure who was complicated, full of ambition, shaped by his family and his community and centuries of systemic racism.
The Washington Post set out to better understand who Floyd really was and reported a series of stories about George Floyd\\u2019s America. We made a podcast based on this reporting, \\u201cThe Life of George Floyd,\\u201d which we\\u2019re playing today for you in full. But two of the reporters on that project still had questions.
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa have now written a book that delves deeper into Floyd\\u2019s life \\u2014 what he was like as a father, a boyfriend, a classmate, an athlete, how ambitious he was. And how those ambitions were hobbled by systemic racism. They learned about things that happened to Floyd\\u2019s family, hundreds of years before he was born, that shaped everything that would happen to him later.
If you\\u2019d like to read an excerpt of Robert and Tolu\\u2019s book, you can find that here: How George Floyd Spent His Final Hours.
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