A brief meditation on the life of George Floyd by his Prairie Home Companion
I am still thinking about George Floyd almost a year after he died with the cop’s knee on his neck because it was in south Minneapolis, a few blocks from the Brethren Meeting Hall I attended as a kid, near where my aunts Margaret and Ruby lived. I wish I had met him but I didn’t patronize the Conga Latin Bistro where he worked security and I didn’t eat at the Trinidadian café he liked. He’d come here from his hometown of Houston where he grew up in the projects in Beyoncé’s old neighborhood. He was a high school basketball star, went to college but it didn’t take, did some hip-hop and rap, did drugs, did prison time, and got religion. He attended a charismatic church that met on a basketball court and he was the guy who hauled a horse-watering trough out on the floor for the pastor to baptize people in. He came north to get in a drug rehab program and change his life.
He’d been unusually tall since middle school and knew that this made him appear threatening and to avoid trouble, he adopted a friendly demeanor all his life. He grew to 6’7” and 225 lbs. He made himself meek and blessed are the meek. He was easygoing, even sort of shy. Shaking hands, he used two hands. He was a hugger. He could lift up a troublemaker and carry him out of the Club. He tried to dance but was too tall, and people laughed at him, and he didn’t mind. He kept a Bible by his bed and in his struggles with addiction, he and his girlfriend Courteney made a practice of standing together, hand in hand, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm. A tall Black man far from his family, dealing with demons, stood close to his girlfriend and they both said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me” and declared their faith in goodness and mercy.
In the world we live in, gesture trumps reality.
South Minneapolis in my youth was highly segregated, no different from any Southern city, and if Margaret or Ruby had met George, they might have been alarmed. When I was 17, my friends and I played basketball against a team of big Black guys in Minneapolis and we were scared speechless and could hardly dribble the ball. George was aware of the effect of his size and color but his gentleness won the day, and if he had spoken the psalm to my aunts and held out his hand, I believe they would’ve taken it in theirs. They would be moved that he knew the words by heart, the green pastures and still waters, the paths of righteousness. George knew the meaning of “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies” — it means that even in the midst of hate, there is beauty and generosity and goodness.
There is also silliness. Our secular liberal society does not know how to honor a godly man and in honor of George Floyd, white institutions issued reams of mission statements about inclusivity and diversity and banning words such as “master” that might be triggers. The “Massa” in Massachusetts could be a trigger and maybe it should change its name to Minnechusetts. To me, this isn’t justice, it’s masturbation, but in the world we live in, gesture trumps reality.
This article is a partial repost from the blog of Garrison Keillor, an American storyteller and radio personality best known for hosting A Prairie Home Companion on public radio from 1974 to 2016. To read the entire post, click here.
• • •• • •
