Abstract
The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the ensuing trial of Derek Chauvin almost a year later rubbed raw the bloodiest stain on the United States’ history and its world reputation. The 9 minutes and 29 seconds during which Chauvin’s knee crushed the spark of life out of Floyd was not unusual in the history of the United States. Before the U.S. Civil War, disobedient slaves were routinely beaten to death for evading orders or for running away, then lynched.
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Johansen, B.E. (2022). “I Can’t Breathe:” Dying While Black in America: Today’s Lynchings and Ending the Heritage of Slavery. In: Johansen, B.E., Akande, A. (eds) Get Your Knee Off Our Necks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85155-2_1
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