11.06.20: George Floyd died at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis. A thousand miles to the south, in the Texas city where he was raised, two rows of police officers saluted as his coffin went past.
Hours before Floyd’s funeral began at a southwest Houston church, uniformed officers stood between the hearse and the front doors. As relatives and friends pushed the gold coffin with blue trimming into the church, the officers raised their hands in a show of respect.
Floyd’s funeral and the public viewing that preceded it a day earlier have been a counterpoint to the fury that his death touched off in cities across America. Floyd, who grew up in a tough public housing complex in Houston’s predominantly black Third Ward, was considered a native son, and the tone adopted by protesters, activists, elected officials and police officers has been one of honouring a grieving Houston family.
Inside the Fountain of Praise church, Floyd, 46, the emblem of an international movement whose name has been chanted by thousands of people since his death, was remembered as the son, brother, uncle and father that he was in life.
Hundreds of mourners filled a Houston church more than two weeks after George Floyd’s death powered sprawling protests across America against racism.
George Perry Floyd Jr was born in North Carolina but grew up in the Cuney Homes housing complex in Houston. He was a 1993 graduate of Jack Yates High School, where he played on the basketball team as a 6-foot-6 power forward “able to dunk with both hands.” And he was a father of five and grandfather of two, according to the funeral programme.
The funeral aired live on broadcast and cable television, and as it began at noon, the New York Stock Exchange went silent for eight minutes, 46 seconds — the length of time a Minneapolis police officer held Floyd’s neck under his knee before he died.