George Floyd’s family fights for sacred ground where he took his last breath: ‘That’s my blood’

Last May, Roger Floyd and Thomas McLaurin walked the lengths of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, passing a roundabout with a garden, and a vacant gas station with a large sign that read: “Where there’s people there’s power.” Though it had been four years since the murder of George Floyd, their nephew and cousin, respectively, concrete barriers erected by the city to protect the area still cordoned off the corner of the street where he was killed by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25 May 2020.

Behind those barriers stands a memorial with a black-and-white mural of George Floyd on the side of a bus stop shelter. “That’s my blood that was laying there taking his last breath. What was he going through?” McLaurin recalled thinking as he stood in front of the mural. Flowers and stuffed animals from visitors surrounded the memorial. Roger said he was struck with a range of emotions from sadness to peace. “You think about the racist demeanor that these individuals had toward him, and it was just like his life did not matter,” he told the Guardian. “The entire space to me is just sacred.”

Now, five years since George Floyd’s murder, the future of the square where he died remains uncertain, as the city council deliberates on development plans. McLaurin and Roger Floyd want the area to be commemorated as a historic site that launched a global racial justice movement and served as a rallying call for police accountability. Roger Floyd would like it to become a pedestrian plaza that includes a memorial to his nephew as well as shops and a library.

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