The protests raged night after night, starting in Minneapolis and swiftly spreading across the U.S. and around the world in the days after George Floyd’s death.
Nearly a year later, the police officer who pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck was convicted of murder Tuesday, and crowds filled city streets again, this time to celebrate the verdict. But the images of the 2020 demonstrations still crackle with tension: protesters with raised fists, police brandishing weapons and tear gas, and fires burning.
In those first nights of the renewed protest movement, some demonstrators held up signs with Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe.” At one point, officers abandoned a Minneapolis police station to the crowds, and demonstrators torched it.
After being exposed to tear gas, some protesters doused their faces with milk. Others set off fireworks. Businesses were ransacked.
Graffiti on city walls called police murderers. In one highly symbolic image, a protester carried a U.S. flag upside down, a sign of distress.
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