Date Time One year after George Floyd: When will white Americans rise up for justice? A Los Angeles Police helicopter hovers as Joyce Robertson, foreground, clenches her fist in Los Angeles after a guilty verdict was announced at the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for the 2020 death of George Floyd. (AP photo by Jae C. Hong) In the long and terrible history of violence against Black people in America, the police killing of George Floyd one year ago may someday stand as a historical marker: After all that the nation has been through, we may have imagined that we had made indelible progress, but the way that Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin planted his knee in Floyd’s neck was a blunt counterpoint.