As the unrest in the United States rages on, the man around whose death it is centred is lovingly recalled by his classmates. Mallory Jackson first met George Floyd in a high school English class in Houston’s Third Ward. He remembers him as great at sports, funny and kind. Jackson has not eaten or slept much since watching images of his old friend dying under a policeman’s knee. Recently, classmates recall George Floyd amid the unrest in the US. The ongoing unrest in the US is attributed mainly to the murder in police custody of George Floyd, who was subjected to police brutality despite having crossed no legal bounds.
“You see a friend of yours on TV for all the wrong reasons and you know you won’t be able to see him anymore. It’s kind of sickening,” said Jackson, 44, wearing a red tee-shirt emblazoned with Floyd’s name and his final words, “I can’t breathe.”
Floyd, whose death at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25 has sparked protests nationwide and beyond, grew up in the Texan city, where he was known in his mostly black neighborhood for his athletic prowess and for looking out for younger kids.
Read more: Unrest over George Floyd murder wreaks havoc in US
The two met for the first time in an English class in middle school, where they spontaneously started making music together.
“We were making beats in class and whatnot and I was banging on the desk and he started freestyling and I stopped and he was like ‘No, no, pick the beat back up and I started beating it,'” recalled Jackson.
Classmates recall George Floyd: a ‘jokester’ with towering appearance
Standing in the yard of Jack Yates High School, where they studied together, he remembered Floyd as a “jokester” with a towering physical presence, which he said he used to protect the younger boys rather than intimidate them.
“He was always in that big brother role,” said Jackson.
“He loved Third Ward. And he wanted better for Third Ward,” he said. “He even left here because he wanted a better opportunity so he can show others that, hey, I can leave and make it you know, you can do it too. You don’t have to just sit in one spot.”
George Floyd's childhood friends suffer private grief during public outcry: "They're chanting his name across the world," said one of Floyd's former high school classmates in Houston, "but they didn't know him like we knew him." https://t.co/Cail3P9oFM
— Jeffrey Levin 🇺🇦 (@jilevin) June 9, 2020
In 2015, the Third Ward was 60 percent African American, compared to 23 percent for the rest of the city, according to the latest census figures.
In the past week, crowds have been gathering at the school to pay their respects to Floyd’s memory: a mural has been painted close to the small, red-brick buildings. Flanked by angel wings, an epitaph reads “Forever breathing in our hearts.”
Equal treatment was Floyd’s hallmark: classmates recall George Floyd
For Redick Edwards IV, who got to know Floyd on the basketball court in the summer before high school, the other boy’s size and speed were remarkable.
“I admired his style of play, you know, to be that tall and able to be that agile and definitely a great athlete,” he said of his childhood friend, who was two years older than him and encouraged in him the confidence he needed to play better.
George Floyd’s Yates HS classmates hold ‘purposeful,’ peaceful march on day after escalations https://t.co/nnX0AVamI4
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) May 31, 2020
Edwards learned of the death of his old friend on the television news while he was eating dinner with his own nine-year-old son.
Read more: Black Lives Matter painted on DC road as protests rage on
“My son was like: ‘Why is he doing that to him if he’s already handcuffed and on the ground?'” Edwards, a hospital dialysis technician who is also an actor, said he now feels “angry” and “hurt.”
Yet he also said it was “pretty amazing for somebody who came from humble beginnings … now having a world of people knowing his name and knowing the injustice that he suffered.”
He marveled at the fact that “one person has sparked so much conversation and unity amongst people.”
“I’m grieving,” he said. “But I’m not going to allow a negative emotion to hijack the bigger picture of what’s needed now in the aftermath of his agonizing and brutal death.”
It was the ideal of equal justice for all people that motivated Floyd as early as the second grade, recalled one of his first teachers, Waynel Sexton.
Read more: Floyd death will not be in vain: Civil Rights leader
She found in her files a short text with drawings that Floyd created when he was around seven, inspired by Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court. The young Floyd also aspired at the time to be a member of the country’s top legal body.
“‘When people say, ‘Your Honor, he did rob the bank,’ I will say, ‘Be seated’. And if he doesn’t, I will tell the guard to take him out. Then I will beat my hammer on the desk, then everybody will be quiet,'” she read from Floyd’s assignment for Black History Month.
Who was George Floyd?
George Floyd, a black man in the United States, recently died due to police brutality at the hands of a white police officer named Derek Chauvin.
Prosecutors wrote that Floyd complied with orders from police officers to leave his vehicle, but did not “voluntarily” get in their squad car. “While standing outside the car, Mr. Floyd began saying and repeating that he could not breathe,” they wrote.
Read more: Unrest over George Floyd murder wreaks havoc in US
Floyd was soon brought to the ground. One officer held Floyd’s back, another his legs, as Chauvin placed his left on Floyd’s neck. Floyd repeated, “I can’t breathe,” “Mama,” and “please,” as the minutes went by.
The medical examiner noted Mr Floyd had underlying heart conditions and the combination of these, “potential intoxicants in his system” and being restrained by the officers “likely contributed to his death”.
The report says Mr Chauvin had his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds – almost three minutes of which was after Mr Floyd became non-responsive.
Nearly two minutes before he removed his knee the other officers checked Mr Floyd’s right wrist for a pulse and were unable to find one. He was taken to the Hennepin County Medical Center in an ambulance and pronounced dead around an hour later. His murder was the spark that lit the fire of unrest in the US.
AFP with additional input by GVS News Desk