Remembrance events over the weekend marked 5 years since Floyd’s murder
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Activists and community leaders in Minneapolis held events over the weekend to mark five years since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.
Sunday: Memorialize the Movement
Katie Sample moved to south Minneapolis from Rockford, Ill., when she was 35 years old. The year was 1968.
“I was so amazed about the beautiful parks,” she said. “There was a park in every neighborhood and this was one of them,” she said about Phelps Field Park where she and her daughter and granddaughter had gathered to pay tribute to George Floyd.
It was the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death and Sample had returned to the park, not far from where Floyd was murdered by police. Sample used to live in the neighborhood and raised her kids there. When she got older, she sold her house to her daughter and moved to a place in Apple Valley with fewer stairs.
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About this time five years ago, she saw the video along with the rest of the world — the video shot by Darnella Frazier that captured the last moments of Floyd’s life.
“It just really blew my mind that an innocent man who was a good man and hadn’t hurt anybody … was murdered in slow motion right in front of our eyes,” Sample said. She drew parallels to what happened in 1968, in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.
On Sunday, Sample attended a Memorialize the Movement event at Phelps Park with her daughter, Valerie McLendon, and granddaughter, Amira McLendon, both of whom have followed in Sample’s footsteps of being active in the Black community.
“She's so humble,” said Amira McLendon about her grandmother. “She started a nonprofit organization back before, before I was even born.”
That nonprofit, called the African American Academy for Accelerated Learning, works with Black children to teach them about their history and culture. Valerie McLendon is now trying to revive that program nearly 40 years later because she still sees the same problem existing in public schools.
Amira McLendon started working as an intern at Memorialize the Movement in 2022; she now works there full-time. The organization rescued the plywood murals that populated Minneapolis in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Some of the murals are polished portraits of Floyd and Philando Castile, a man shot by police, while others are raw messages that say things like, “Respect is Earned” in graffiti type.
During the week leading up to the five-year anniversary of Floyd’s death, Memorialize the Movement led walking tours highlighting the murals’ original locations.
“One of our biggest missions is to make sure the murals stay within the community, the ones that people are painting, the ones that were painted in 2020,” Amira McLendon said.
Amira McLendon, Valerie McLendon and Katie Sample had mixed reactions when asked if things have gotten better since Floyd’s killing.
Amira McLendon applauds the work of her grandmother, Katie. She grew up in her house and saw that service to the community was just what you did. “Social justice, Black liberation, all that sort of stuff, it’s a core part of their lives,” Amira said.
Walking through the maze of murals set up on the park grounds, Sample remarked at the messages painted on one of them, “Fear Is What Divides Us. Love Is What United Us.”
“I love that,” Sample said.
The messages painted on plywood remind her of the Civil Rights Era.
“You know, the essence of who we are as a society, hasn’t changed,” she said.
For her part, Amira McLendon hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to organize events like this in the future. “We hope that we don’t have to do this for the rest of our lives, let alone the next five years,” she said.
Saturday: Day 1 of Rise and Remember
The intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue came to life with a street festival on Saturday afternoon.
Activists and musical artists took the stage before a large wooden fist. Food trucks lined one block, with Black vendors and organizations set up on the stretch to 39th Street. Different groups provided free services to the public through stations for free clothing, groceries, glucose and blood pressure testing and organic meals. Area businesses had doors open to the outside.
“It feels good seeing all the people together, different colors, and everybody having no drama, just love,” said Kyla Poole, a nearby resident. She attended the festival with her sister and young daughter.
Derek Ives traveled almost an hour from New Germany, Minn., for the Rise and Remember Festival. He’s been visiting George Floyd Square at least once a week since 2020, documenting community work through photography, and he appreciates that the space continues to allow people of different backgrounds to connect.
“I've learned a lot here. You think you got life figured out until you meet somebody with a different story,” he said.
The nonprofit Rise and Remember has hosted the annual festival of the same name at the intersection since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, to honor him and others killed by police violence.
Several families of other victims traveled to Minnesota this weekend.
“I’m here to embrace the family of George to let them know we’re still standing with them,” said Cephus Johnson, known as Uncle Bobby X. He is the uncle of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Oakland man who was shot and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit police in 2009. Johnson’s death was the subject of the film “Fruitvale Station.”
Johnson has been offering support to families impacted by police violence in the years since his nephew’s death.
“If we don’t stand here today at the George Floyd Square and speak power to the injustice of police violence, then our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren, it will be their demise tomorrow,” Johnson said. “We have an obligation to them to have our voice heard, to speak loud to the injustices, so that they may have real freedom, justice and equality in this world.”
Deanna Joseph, of Tampa, Fla., is also part of this network. Her 14-year-old son, Andrew Joseph III, was struck by a driver and killed while trying to cross a busy interstate in 2014. He had been kicked out of a fair by police. A jury verdict in a wrong death lawsuit forced the sheriff to pay the parents a $15 million settlement.
Deanna Joseph has attended the Rise and Remember Festival in the past and said the day was emotional for her.
“In five years, you wonder if you’re doing enough. When will the bleeding ever stop?” she said. “When will Black lives really, really be seen as more than a hashtag and something that's mattering beyond a festival and a memorial?”
Friday: Day of Remembrance
The nonprofit Win Back held a Day of Remembrance on Friday.
Faith leaders started the morning with an interfaith prayer at Minneapolis City Hall.
“This is an important milestone as we move forward together in common humanity with humility, asking our God for grace and peace and a way forward that brings us all in unity,” Minnesota Council of Churches CEO Suzanne Kelly said.
Prayer leaders called on the city to continue making changes, and said not enough has been done in the last five years.
Imam Asad Zaman reflected on what he called a struggle for human dignity after Floyd’s murder.
“Some part of that struggle we succeeded, and a large part of that struggle remains unfulfilled,” Zaman said. “That is the reality we are facing five years later. And I agree that the prayer is the beginning of our action.”
Activist and reverend Nekima Levy-Armstrong called on the broader Minneapolis community to keep up pressure on city leaders.
“We have a responsibility to lift up the poor and the vulnerable and the downtrodden and the oppressed,” Levy-Armstrong said. “We cannot let any system, oh God – whether it's the political system, institutions and even the religious systems – stop us from breaking through and speaking the truth.”
Around 40 people, including St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter, joined the family of George Floyd for a moment of silence at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue on Friday afternoon. Each placed a yellow rose at the site where Floyd took his last breath. “This means so much, especially in this political climate, that people still come and show their care,” said Floyd’s aunt Angela Harrelson.
Leslie Redmond, a civil rights activist, organized the day of remembrance. “When we don’t remember, we repeat. And we don’t ever want to repeat George Floyd being murdered,” she said.
Correction (May 26, 2025): An earlier version of this story carried an incorrect first name for Valerie McLendon. The above story has been corrected.
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