Growing up in a shack surrounded by piney woods and tobacco fields in eastern North Carolina, George Floyd’s aunt Angela Harrelson was taught by her sharecropper parents how to get along in a slowly desegregating America: Sit at the back of the bus, do what white folks tell you, “stay strong and hold on.”
She hopes the four police officers charged in the case, including former officer Derek Chauvin, 44, who is accused of murder, will face justice from a government that has allowed white people to discriminate against African Americans for generations. Her great grandfather, Hillary Thomas Stewart, was a slave. He got his freedom at age 8, and settled near Goldsboro, NC. By age 21, Stewart had accumulated 500 acres of land and married a woman named Larcenia, who would bear him 22 children.
Jones had become pregnant with the first of 14 children at age 13, but taught herself to read, write and play piano. Harrelson was the youngest of her 10 daughters, all of whom graduated from high school. Soon after settling in Eagan, an inner suburb, where racism was often hidden in “Minnesota nice,” Harrelson went to get her hair done at the J.C. Penney salon in a local mall. She saw they had products to wash and condition black hair, but their sole black stylist was off, and the white stylist refused.“I was like Rosa Parks,” she said, laughing. “I said, ‘I’m not getting out of this chair. I’m not trying to make a statement, I just don’t want to drive to North Minneapolis’.
She chafed at prosecutors’ delays, at the release of an autopsy that initially failed to label his death a homicide - until after the family’s lawyer released results of their independent autopsy this week.
How about that time Floyd touched the heart of a pregnant black woman when he pressed his gun against her stomach to demand money or drugs during a home invasion?
All this time I didn't know I was marked by racism being as how i'm white privileged guy. In the 60s we cropped tobacco for less than 2.50, picked cotton and and watermelons. My mom cleaned whites homes. We did okay nothing was given to us and we didn't ask but life was good.
slowly desegregating poor in America are people of second sort. world's richest country unable to provide education and health care. poors die in epidemic like they died before without health care, but these hundreds of thousand were hiden from spot of society. 200 mln 2nd sort
usembassyharare where are the human rights for slavery on Ur ppl ha only start in oppressing black ppl
Good article, 🙏
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Angela Harrelson’s great grandfather was a slave. He got his freedom at age 8, and settled near Goldsboro, NC with his wife. But when white farmers settled their land, they were unable to fight back. “It was stolen from them,” Harrelson said.