2020–2021 United States racial unrest

Racial unrest in the United States was widespread in 2020 and into 2021. While protests against police brutality towards Black men and women have been ongoing for decades, demonstrations increased significantly with news of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during a police arrest on May 25, 2020. For about a week, the number of protests and participants increased daily across the country and around the world. Although looting and property destruction did occur from the demonstrations, the majority of protests were peaceful. Several police departments in the US faced criticism for their handling of these protests, both for their failure to contain the violence, and for acts of police brutality towards protesters. Demonstrations on a smaller scale continued for a year. While Floyd’s death was the catalyst for most of the largest demonstrations, other protests were prompted by other police shootings of Black Americans. The response to Floyd's kiilling and other unarmed Black people became the largest mass protest movement in American history, with estimates ranging from fifteen to over twenty million participants. The racial unrest was a central factor in a renewed national discussion of race relations and the 2020 US Presidential Election, and President Donald Trump’s comments and actions regarding the protests were widely criticized.

Many factors other than Floyd’s death led to the heightened racial unrest and public awareness of racism. Much of the nation was restricted in some way due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, so families were under stress due to job loss and the closure of schools. Job losses during the COVID-related recession disproportionally affected Black Americans and other people of color. That same year, police killings of Black men remained two and a half times more common than for White men. The demonstrations and renewed conversation about racism in the US further divided American voters as the 2020 election approached, and this divide continued well beyond the final results.

Background

In 2013, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi formed a movement following the Florida trial of George Zimmerman. Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, and was found not guilty of murder. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement started with a Facebook post in response to the acquittal. Later, activists formed BLM chapters in cities across the United States and organized demonstrations. Allegations of police brutality against Black people made the organizers feel as if their lives did not matter to society, such that they decided to name the movement Black Lives Matter (BLM).

The following year, the BLM movement gained national attention when members organized protests following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. White police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, an unarmed Black teenager. Both a grand jury and the US Department of Justice declined to press charges against Wilson. This provoked widespread protests and unrest in Ferguson and other US cities.

BLM’s influence soon stretched beyond national borders, and new chapters were formed in Europe and Canada. Leaders began advocating for defunding and deconstructing the nation’s police system and replacing it with a new form of law enforcement. They argued many US police forces operated as quasi-military units, and were ill-equipped to address mental health issues in the community, despite the frequency of 911 calls for mental health issues. BLM’s supporters proposed alternatives to police, such as mental health experts, would better serve communities.

In the years following Martin and Brown's killings, many other deaths of Black men and women were brought to light through the use of social media. Many of these cases involved police shootings, but the officers involved were rarely charged with crimes and seldom prosecuted. For example, a police officer shot twelve-year-old Tamir Rice while he was holding a toy gun in Cleveland, Ohio, on November 22, 2014. A police officer shot Walter Scott in the back five times as he was running away on April 4, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina. Police shot and killed Alton Sterling on July 5, 2016, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while being handcuffed on the ground. Philando Castile was killed on July 6, 2016, in St. Paul, Minnesota, when police stopped his car. He told them he had a weapon and was licensed to carry it. Police shot him when he was reaching for the license, and his girlfriend live-streamed the shooting on Facebook. In Sacramento, California, police shot Stephon Clark at least seven times while he was in his grandmother’s backyard on March 18, 2018. In a case that initially did not attract national attention, but came to the forefront again after Floyd’s death, Breonna Taylor was asleep when police raided her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13, 2020, mistaking her residence with that of a man with an outstanding warrant. The police did not knock or identify themselves as police officers, since they had a “no knock warrant” that allowed them to storm the apartment without performing either action. Taylor’s boyfriend believed someone was breaking into the apartment and fired his gun. Police officers returned fire, shooting Taylor eight times which resulted in her death. While two of the officers involved were fired, none of the officers faced criminal charges for Taylor’s death.

While these and other deaths led to protests, action was often limited to fairly local demonstrations. Seveal shootings were captured on police body cams or security cameras, but most did not appear on social media. However, many witnesses were present when George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. His death was recorded and shared online. It rapidly spread on Twitter and other social media platforms. The images sparked protests across the country and around the world.

The police body cam, security camera, and cellphone footage showed Minneapolis police arriving in response to a store employee’s report that Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Officers took Floyd into custody. Floyd, who said he was claustrophobic, refused to get into the police vehicle and fell to the ground. Derek Chauvin, a White police officer who arrived after Floyd was already in handcuffs, pinned Floyd to the ground, face down, kneeling on his neck. Bystanders who heard Floyd repeatedly say he could not breathe pleaded with or demanded Chauvin get off him. Once Floyd became unresponsive, another officer checked him for a pulse, but did not find one. The officers did not provide medical assistance, and Chauvin remained on Floyd’s neck for an additional two minutes and fifty-three seconds after Floyd became unresponsive. In total, Floyd was pinned down with Chauvin’s knee on his neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Floyd was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later.

Overview

Footage of Floyd’s death spread quickly on social media. The following day, Chauvin and four other officers were fired. Hundreds of demonstrators began protesting in Minneapolis. Some sprayed graffiti on police cars and the police station. The protests became more widespread on May 27, 2020, with demonstrations in cities including Los Angeles, California, and Memphis, Tennessee. Many protesters in Portland, Oregon, lay face down on the street, hands behind their backs, and chanted “I can’t breathe.” The Minneapolis police station where the officers who arrested Floyd were based was set on fire.

The demonstrations increased daily in number which drew more notice to Floyd’s death. Minneapolis police arrested multiple reporters covering the protests on May 29. That same day, Chauvin was charged with murder and manslaughter. By May 31, the sixth night of protests, a total of more than four thousand people had been arrested and at least five were reported killed. Protests, some violent, had been held in more than seventy-five cities including New York City. Many communities across the country instituted curfews.

Demonstrations took place simutaneously in Washington, DC, as well. Protesters and police clashed, resulting in vandalized property and cars set ablaze in downtown Washington. Many protesters marched in the vicinity of the White House. The US Secret Service, US Park Police, and Washington, DC Metropolitan Police worked together to protect the federal property.

On June 1, President Donald Trump, who had spent some time in a secure bunker under the White House during the protests, threatened to send the military to stop the demonstrations and violence. Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, DC, imposed a 7 p.m. curfew. However, at 6:35 p.m., federal police moved on the protesters near the White House. They fired rubber bullets, flash bangs, and tear gas into the crowd and drove protesters out of Lafayette Square. Once the area was cleared, Trump and members of his administration walked across Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been damaged during the protests. There, Trump held up a Bible for photographers and posed next to the church. Trump faced criticism for his insensitivity to the demands of the protesters, and the police faced accusations of police brutality for the methods they used to clear Lafayette Square.

Protests around the world continued through 2020. Black Lives Matter demonstrations took place in Australia, France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Protesters in Virginia pulled down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond. Other Confederate statues and memorials of people connected to the Confederate South or the spread of slavery in the Americas were torn down as well. Several shootings and deaths of Black men prompted new demonstrations, as did the announcement in September that a grand jury did not indict police directly in Breonna Taylor’s death; the jury indicted one officer on first-degree wanton endangerment charges.

On August 28, families of African Americans who had been killed or injured during encounters with law enforcement converged on Washington, DC, for the 2020 March on Washington. On the fifty-seventh anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, speakers called for justice and police reform and action to ensure Black voting rights.

Mistreatment of several protesters in 2020, in particular those demonstrating near the White House, reinforced many demonstrators’ beliefs that officials supported police who abused their power. Many protest leaders called for defunding the police. This refers to reallocating some or all of the police departments’ budgets to other agencies, such as social services that provide mental health and substance abuse counseling and treatment. Activists noted much law enforcement training was focused on addressing threats and subduing violent people, and blamed escalation to use of deadly force mainly on police. They pointed to multiple cases where a family called 911 for help with a relative, specifically noting the person was being treated for mental illness, only to have police arrive and shoot the individual who needed help. Some communities announced they would take this approach. Los Angeles said it would reallocate $100 million in police funding to programs for minority communities. Baltimore voted to reallocate $22 million of the police department’s $500 million for 2021 to recreation centers, trauma centers, and a program of forgivable loans for Black-owned businesses.

Chauvin’s trial took place in March and April 2021. On April 20, he was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. His sentencing was scheduled to take place in June. When they heard the news, a crowd chanted “Black lives matter” at the intersection where Floyd died, which Minneapolis had renamed George Floyd Square.

President Joseph Biden used the word 'murder' when he addressed the nation hours after the verdict was delivered. One of Floyd’s brothers, Philonise Floyd, said protests would have to continue because the cycle of violence against Black people was continuing. Civil rights lawyer Nekima Levy Armstrong said the guilty verdict did not occur because the justice system worked; rather, it was because the public demanded justice.

Even as the Chauvin trial took place, the world learned of other deaths of people of color at the hands of law enforcement. Among these was Daunte Wright, who was killed near Minneapolis on April 11, 2021, during a traffic stop. The police officer who shot him claimed she meant to use her Taser but instead fired her handgun. She went under investigation and then resigned. From the start of testimony on March 29 to the day the Floyd verdict was read, at least sixty-four people in the United States were killed by police. More than half were Black or Latino, according to The New York Times. Footage of a traffic stop that took place in December 2020 also emerged during the Chauvin trial. Caron Nazario, a Black and Latino lieutenant in the US Army, was pulled over by police in Virginia as he drove home in his new vehicle. Officers pulled their weapons on Nazario, who was in uniform, and one used pepper spray on him repeatedly. The Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights investigated the officers and department. The officer who used pepper spray, and later struck Nazario when he was on the ground, was fired.

The George Floyd case and expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement left a lasting impression on the nation. An estimated ten thousand demonstrations took place between May 2020 and April 2021. Almost 170 symbols of the Confederacy were removed from public spaces or renamed. The slogan “Black Lives Matter” was installed in enormous letters spanning the width of public streets, including a street near the White House, and on murals in many communities. Reallocation of police department funding, or establishment of a completely new system of law enforcement, was discussed in communities across the nation, and some communities began to fund police alternatives by mid-2021. Despite these strides, activists said more had to be done to ensure Black people had justice and were treated fairly in society, and to ensure that the gains of the 2020-2021 protests remained permanent.

In 2024, widespread movements occurred on U.S. college campuses that drew the largest participation of protesters since the events in 2020-2021. The protests stemmed from the Israeli response to the murders of more than 1,000 of its citizens by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on October 7, 2023. In its subsequent military campaign to subdue Hamas in Gaza, Israel was accused of directing indiscriminate and disproportional use of lethal weaponry against Palestinian civilians resulting in more than 30,000 reported deaths and the onset of famine. Similar to the events of 2020-2021, the U.S. college demonstrations again had racial overtones. Supporters of Israel highlighted antisemitic themes issued by numbers of the college protestors. Supporters of Palestine likened the Israeli military operation to racial genocide.

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