Houston, TX, June 8th, 2020
Monday, June 8th, 2020
I awoke at my friend’s home in the Springbranch corner of Houston, west of The Heights neighborhood. Still sticky from yesterday’s protest, I rolled off the couch and stumbled sleepily to my car, where I grabbed my finery for the somber event to come. I threw my wrinkled white shirt in the dryer, then hopped in the shower.
“Black for the funeral, or another color?”, I asked my friend. “The blue one”, she said, pointing to my tie with her lit cigarette. “It matches your pants.”
Dressed to the nines, I climbed into my car and typed in the address of The Fountain of Praise Church, where a public viewing of George Floyd was to be held later today. With the commands of the GPS to guide my way through an unfamiliar city, I slid onto the highway and headed south for the church.
There was a lot to think about on that drive to the church. Centuries of slavery, lynching, booming prison populations, and unspeakable police brutality. I couldn’t help but to glance over at drivers passing by, wondering if our nation’s uprising was on their minds too. Maybe not. Maybe they were thinking about the global, deadly pandemic. The economic depression, perhaps? They could be thinking about the tropical storm currently careening through the Gulf. It’s not wise to project. I can’t know what others are thinking, except by their words and actions, and even then there’s always the potential for deception. I could only be sure of what was on my mind, the video of Floyd gasping for breath and screaming for his mother. My military friends tell me that screaming for one’s mother is a pretty common sign that one is dying. George Floyd knew he was dying.
I pulled off the 610 highway and looped around, cruising slowly past a grassy median filled with American flags. The church slowly came into view, a massive affair with a colossal fountain spouting into the sky. The parking lots were closed off, so I hooked a u-turn and fell in line with the long chain of vehicles slowly rolling past the church. I pulled into a nearby Home Depot’s parking lot and moved some shopping carts to take residence under the shade of a tree. Home Depot staff are in their orange aprons, masked and gloved. They are passing water bottles to the mourners walking to the church. It’s apparent there’s more than one crisis occurring in the U.S.
The scene in front of the church was colorful and kinetic. There are many black families with kids in tow, media setting up cameras and mics, and police sternly gazing at the swelling crowd of mourners. It was approaching 11 a.m. when I turned on the Facebook app and began live-streaming the crowd. The sun was high, temperatures approached 100 degrees fahrenheit and everyone was sweating bullets, myself included.
I entered the line of mourners filing into the church to view Floyd’s body. The older gentleman standing in front of me agreed to respond to my questions. His answers echoed what so many others have told me as I’ve been traveling and covering this uprising. He told me he did not know George Floyd personally, but he had come to the viewing to bear witness. This man told me that this was a historic occasion. That this was a new chapter in the civil rights struggle, and that George Floyd’s death reminded him of Emmet Till. The reference to Emmet Till’s murder, sixty long years ago, reminded me how long Black folks have been struggling. I asked him, “Have you heard the news out of Minneapolis, that they’re abolishing the police department?” He responded, “They need to. They need to, because you can only tell a person to do a job a certain way. If they go off of their training, then it’s not on you. That man could have done a better job.”
As I approached the entrance of the church, a young worker informed me that I would have to turn off my phone before entering the church. I took the moment to end the livestream and hydrate, as I was sweating profusely in the Houston summer heat. I had, moments before, seen EMTs wheeling away a mourner who had collapsed, possibly from a heatstroke. The line shuffled forward, and soon enough I entered the church and felt the blast of the AC hit my face. I had a metal-detector wand waved around me, then was given a paper program with a photo of George Floyd on one side, a note of gratitude for attending on the backside. From the vestibule, I passed into the nave of the church. There was a long aisle between rows of pews funnelling to the coffin where Floyd’s body lay. There were stickers placed upon the ground imploring us to maintain social distance, and I strove to maintain six feet as I followed the line of mourners approaching Floyd’s body. The gospel music was resoundingly loud through the church. It felt as though we were being rushed through quickly. The woman ahead of me finished paying her respects, and then it was my turn to stand but a few feet away and gaze upon George’s face.
Have you ever seen the body of someone murdered? Have you ever seen a dead human body and known that, if not for the actions of another human, that body would still be animate and conscious? Time felt both sped up and slowed to a crawl as I looked upon the still face of George Floyd. The face now known around the world. He was a handsome man, he looked younger than his forties, the makeup had him looking a gray color and God how I wished that he hadn’t been murdered. I have Black friends his age whom I love dearly. To think that this could be their fate, to think of the soul the world has lost with Floyd’s murder had me crying and screaming with rage on the inside. I didn’t start openly weeping until I exited the church and re-entered the burning Houston sun.