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May 25 marked five years after the gruesome murder of George Floyd that shook the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before we saw the shocking news videos of Floyd begging for his life with the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, the fear of death and infection from COVID-19 was intensifying among African Americans and other people of color, who were contracting COVID-19 at higher rates. Watching Floyd's horrific death caused racial tensions to rise across the nation, leading to numerous protests against police brutality. The racial unrest, combined with the frightening uncertainties of COVID-19, made 2020 a distressing year.

I remember a Facebook post from one of my college classmates after Floyd's killing that painfully expressed the anxiety many Black men were feeling at this time. My classmate is a father, as Floyd was, and in his post he mentioned the alarming thoughts going through his mind of how he could possibly be racially profiled by police simply from walking in his neighborhood or dining in the upscale areas he frequents with his family in Los Angeles. Floyd was suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at Cup Foods, a small convenience store in Minneapolis, and the store clerk claimed that he was "awfully drunk," according to a New York Times report. Due to the bogus bill allegation, it is difficult to argue that the store clerk specifically targeted Floyd because he was Black; however, the security footage acquired by the Times clearly shows that Floyd's constitutional rights were cruelly violated by Chauvin and the other officers who responded to the clerk's call. Seeing how Floyd died in police custody triggered the emotions of my classmate and other Black males, knowing that the problem of police brutality persists.

Five years later, we can ask ourselves whether the nation has healed from this incident and if we have made progress moving forward. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Recent data shared by The Washington Post and the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence showed police killings continue to rise after the murder of Floyd. In 2024, police killed at least 1,226 people; some were armed, others were not. Racial disparities of police killings ranked by ethnic groups per 100,000 people, since 2015, revealed a top three of Native Americans, Blacks and Hispanics.

Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and CEO, penned an editorial for MSNBC in which he stated extreme concern regarding systemic "police brutality against Black people." Johnson mentions the Justice Department, under the direction of President Donald Trump, forgoing civil rights investigations of police departments in states like Tennessee, Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Johnson also points out that the Justice Department will no longer seek to hold Minneapolis police "accountable for routinely violating Black people's civil rights." He stressed that the NAACP will continue to fight for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and push for federal oversight to hold police units liable for wrongdoing. Johnson strongly advocated in his conclusion for protection, power and justice. There was urgency in his words, and I began to think about how past civil rights leaders pushed this same agenda but also with a focus on Godly love as the definitive answer. For example, in his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. briefly touched on police brutality, calling it an "unspeakable (horror)," and in a sermon titled "Levels of Love," preached at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church the previous year, King appealed to his congregation to exercise agape love when dealing with individuals who wanted the status quo of racial segregation to remain. He explained how Christian love is the love of God that transforms the human heart, stating, "The greatness of it is that you love every man, not for your sake but for his sake. And you love every man because God loves him." I will never forget the late Rev. C.T. Vivian sharing with me that this love is what pushed through the legislation of the civil rights era. They were not just fighting for the letter of the law to change but also imploring people to relinquish their racist thinking. The systemic racism rooted in police brutality is a corrupt heart condition. We must pray for this to change in hopes of moving beyond the George Floyd tragedy.

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Dr. Jessica A. Johnson is a lecturer in the English department at Ohio State University's Lima campus. Email her at smojc.jj@gmail.com. Follow her on X: @JjSmojc. To find out more about Jessica Johnson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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