I Came To Bear Witness To A Lynching: Part 2 Minneapolis, MN

Garrick McFadden
10 min readAug 17, 2023
Photo taken by the author of the mural that adorns the wall near where George was murdered.

George Floyd was lynched. I was a reluctant witness of his lynching. It was the first lynching I had ever seen.

Sheltered and protected in my home. Surrounded by the amenities and comfort of my dwelling, I watched as members of the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George. One white police officer methodically pressed his knee into the back of George’s neck. He sustained continuous pressure on George. He squeezed the essence that made George, George, out of him.

It was the first lynching that had been broadcast into our homes during my lifetime. We collectively had been traumatized by the Rona, and some of us were not dealing well with the isolation we had been forced into to stop the spread. We had exhausted the television programs and movies that had guided us through the early days of the Rona. We were restless, and we felt death was omnipresent during this time.

This is why so many of us consumed this snuff film with zero reservations. We greedily invaded this man’s most intimate final moments. Many of us cried in anguish as we witnessed a grown man beg for his departed mother to intercede on his behalf, to no avail. We saw a rigid body turn limp. We counted the minutes and studied the white officer’s countenance as the public pleaded with him to get off that man’s neck. Every…

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Garrick McFadden

I am a civil-rights attorney. I write about #whiteness, #racism, #hiphop, policing & politics. https://gamesqlaw.com/index.php/thoughts/