Eight Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds

George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, by a police officer who knelt on his neck for over nine minutes while bystanders filmed and pleaded. The video spread everywhere. There was no ambiguity, no angle that made it look different, no context that softened it. Within days, protests erupted in all 50 states and across the globe — the largest civil rights demonstrations in American history, occurring in the middle of a pandemic, which tells you everything you need to know about how badly this needed to happen. Cities imposed curfews. National Guard units deployed. The phrase "I can't breathe" was spray-painted on walls from Portland to Berlin. Some people discovered systemic racism for the first time in 2020, which was both welcome and astonishing, like finding out about gravity in your forties. Corporate America released statements. Some of them even meant it. The trial wouldn't come until 2021, but the verdict on America had already been rendered by a cellphone camera on a street corner in Minneapolis.