'His Name is George Floyd' wins Pulitzer Prize for best nonfiction

The book “His Name is George Floyd” has won a Pulitzer Prize in best general nonfiction. The award was announced Monday. All Things Considered host Tom Crann spoke with one of the authors, Robert Samuels in May 2022. Samuels and co-author Toluse Olorunnipa are reporters with the Washington Post.

Hear the full interview using the audio player above, or read a transcript of it below. Both have been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

At what point did you decide in covering his death that there was a story to be told?

We were trying to figure out ways to get people to understand systemic racism. And we had an editor who suggested maybe George Floyd is the person who could help illustrate how these systems operate.

And when you dug in, what did you discover?

We learned that at every turn, George Floyd's life and his ancestors were shaped by racism. We trace it to a great grandfather whose name was Hillary Thomas Stewart, who, after he was emancipated, amassed 500 acres of land in eastern North Carolina that was taken away from him. We now know that passing on of wealth is the most important way to maintain wealth in this country. Before he could make one transfer, he was stripped from being one of the wealthiest landowners in North Carolina.

And George Floyd learned when he was growing up that maybe doing things academically won't be the way because the school systems were crumbling, they're under-resourced. So he essentially majored in football in high school. And he was very good. But because he was told to focus on sports, not studying, he was not able to fill the academic requirements to go to college.

Now fast forward to him as an adult, he's not able to go to college, he's in a neighborhood that's deprived and there's a large police presence due to the war on drugs. And we know that even though Blacks and whites have always used drugs at the same rate, the incarceration levels for drug related charges for Black people increased 300 percent and decreased 9 percent for white people.

And so he goes to prison and he comes out as a more broken man, which is when he decides to restart his life in Minneapolis.

What does that history tell you about the call for reparations?

The idea of reparations is better off in this thinking that there was a harm done, that harm is measurable and you should pay it back. One of the interesting things is, you know, the Floyd family — they get this $27 million settlement from from the City of Minneapolis. I was with the family the night that they received that settlement and one of the conversations we had was, it's this kind of reparations, in a sense, saying we're sorry, it's done. And it was such an uneasy feeling, right, because you can't put a price on a life, but also the idea that this might be what justice looks like, was a pretty uncomfortable idea for them.

I want to talk about his move to Minneapolis. Why did he decide to do it?

After he has a stint in prison after pleading guilty to an armed robbery charge which he did because by his telling, not because he committed the crime, but because he felt there was no better choice — he's down on his luck.

It's very hard in Texas to get a professional license if you have a criminal record. And he had developed a substance use issue that he was trying to kick. He had heard of friends who had gone to treatment centers in Minneapolis and come out on the other sides as thriving, godly, healthy people. And so George Floyd wanted that for himself. He wanted to provide for his daughter so he makes the choice to move.

Tell us more about how Minneapolis plays into the larger story about the country and racism that Floyd endured.

Well, the Minnesota paradox is that dissonance between the progressive history of Minneapolis and the glaring disparities — the violence, the police violence that lies within the state's borders. One thing that we know for certain about George Floyd is that after he came out of prison, he never wanted to go back. He was claustrophobic. He wanted to do his time and do something great. So police officers really frightened him because they carried the threat of jail. And we have an anecdote in the book about how he was particularly impacted by the death of Philando Castile.

Tell us more about that.

There was something about the story that he couldn't get over it, it could have been its proximity to Minneapolis and it could have been the fact that there was that little girl [in Castile’s car when he was shot] that reminded him of his little girl. And so when that shooting happened, he told friends that he knows that cops are just waiting to kill someone like him, who was of his size, who looked fairly intimidating. Even though by all accounts George Floyd was a calm presence. He was not violent.

He's working at a homeless shelter, and he meets Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, and when he sees her, he gives her this huge hug. He talks about how unfair it was and how it was not right. When we chatted about this, she told me you could just feel the warmth in him, that he was a man who knew how to hug.

You had access to Floyd’s journals where he would write. He'd write song lyrics, poetry and thoughts. What was that like?

There's this stereotype that a person who looks like George Floyd, with his size and his education level, that they probably would not be very introspective. But when those diary entries and letters and text messages were shown, that's not what we saw. We saw a person who really thought about his position in the world, but also a sense of optimism and persistence about life.

There are times where he says all he wants to do is love. There is another one where he talks about a day as being Black. We believe that was the last one. And he says, life really sucks, but life never sucks and I think that's one of the things that we think about in the book, you know, this idea that somehow not just George Floyd, but his family after he dies, and so many of the people who took up his cause, hold this idea that things are bad right now, but we can't give in that life doesn't have to fully suck.