By: Celestine Mel (June 04, 2020)

George 'Perry' Floyd was an ex-convict. He spent 5 years in prison from 2009 for armed robbery committed in 2007. After his release, he moved to the Minnesota area in search for a job and ended up as Security Man in a restaurant. The job evaporated due to the corona-virus pandemic. Perry was temporarily laid off. And jobless.

On May 25, 2020, he went to buy cigarette from a food shop and his neck ended up under the knee of a white policeman, who was called by the shopkeepers to accost George for paying with a fake $20 bill. He was killed.

Someone recorded a short video of the police encounter, showing the last moments of George’s life, and his screams, pleas and cries for air and lastly shouting out the name of his late mother, who died three years earlier, and uttering the words ‘I can’t breathe’. Perry was seething with pain, eyes bulging out in a fit of asphyxiating suffocation, choking to death under the knee of a ruthless policeman and his three other colleagues who looked on, unconcerned with the tragic end of this American boy. The video was posted online and shared on social media channels around the world.

It was the last straw on the long-suffering back of the black community in America. From Minnesota to Washington, Indiana to Memphis, American citizens of all colours poured into the streets to denounce racism and demand a new type of country and justice for George Floyd.

Today, Perry has become in death, the symbol of change that has shaken America to its foundations. Through him, the USA is facing the most seismic citizen action in many decades. The White House was evacuated for fear of harm to President Trump. The military was deployed across the country for the first time in several centuries. George has become the metaphor for the existential contradictions in God's own country - America. The country and indeed, the entire world have been forced to rethink the role of race relations in a constantly changing human landscape.

As I sat to watch the first in a series of planned memorial services in the University of Minnesota this evening, so many thoughts raced through my mind. How come none of the policemen in the scene on that day, raised any voice to save Floyd’s life? Why did he even go to that shop at that time? Who took the video recording and why? How could one small event in a rural corner of USA become so big, shaking the entire world this way? How could this prisoner suddenly become in death, a hero and the anchor upon which this generation of Americans are hooking their hopes on?

Alas, George Floyd has become in death, bigger than anyone he ever thought he could be in life. I saw Ludacriss. Tyresse, TI, Rev. Al Shapton and other superstars in the University auditorium as they struggled for space to pay respects to this ex-felon. I have seen major news networks across the world, stop normal programming to follow Floyd’s body around. Presidents and Monarchs are struggling to identify with the moment. Trump has cancelled his public engagements for the week for fear of the unknown with the chances of his re-election looking more and more impossible by the day.

Everybody agrees that this moment would bring a new phase to America by forcing a correction of some of the ills that keep the blacks down; a frosty history of dark race relations characterized by slavery, denial of civil rights, discrimination and injustice.

Only in America.

** Celestine Mel is a chartered banker. He writes from Abuja, Nigeria.

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Just like rosa park,matin luther and co..george floyd's name,will forever be remembered..he just wrote his name in black history book.all because he could not breathe yesterday,so dat other blacks can breathe today..rest in perfect peace.bro.