The teenager who filmed George Floyd’s tragedy on camera, Darnella Frazier, has recently been awarded the Pulitzer Prize last Friday.
The video received a lot of traction worldwide, bringing attention and the spotlight to what had happened at hand.
An ex-Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was arrested and charged for first and degree second murder for kneeling on his neck for nine and a half minutes which led to his death. There were nationwide protests that followed soon after the day the video was filmed on May 25th, 2020. Officials did not release the full body camera footage until months after, leading to the case that happened in 2021.
The prize committee revealed in a public statement that they gave the award to Frazier to distinguish and pay tribute to the 17-year-old who captured the infamous video.point 248 |
She was one of the few who “courageously reporting the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice”.point 220 | 1
The video had captured the brutality of ex-police officer, Derek Chauvin, and demonstrated what went down for Floyd’s tragedy. Floyd told law enforcement that he could not breathe 27 times because they had joked “this is why you don’t do drugs, kids”.
These moments were captured on camera and even more footage was released along with Frazier’s to conclude the culprit as guilty.
The video sparked a lot of outrage, and it led to misleading police reports connected to other cases that are involved with Black men. The public report had fabricated some of the details of what truly happened, but Frazier’s video had debunked some of the details that were released.
During the trial of George Floyd’s murder, Frazier testified that the killing had a lasting impact on her point of view and for others who had witnessed him die in front of them.
She says that “it’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life. But it’s like, it’s not what I should have done, it’s what he should have done.”
She is reminded everyday that she is still a girl trying to heal something that she is reminded of everyday.