To those closest to him, he was Perry or Floyd

For Courteney Ross, there’s a distinction between the man she still loves and the movement that bears his name. 

“I kind of have to separate Floyd from George Floyd,” said Ross. 

Ross met Floyd, who she called by his last name – “unless I was getting mad at him and call(ing) him George Perry Floyd” – in 2017. Floyd was working security at the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center, where Ross was waiting to visit someone. Floyd noticed that Ross was becoming upset and offered to pray with her. 

“I just was so kind of taken back by how kind he was,” said Ross of their chance encounter. This was the first time she learned who he was – someone who would support people when he saw that they needed help. “He had these big long arms that he would just kind of wrap around people and give them all types of support and love. And he was doing that for me that night.”

That same night, he asked for her number, and they shared their first kiss in the lobby. 

“It was really sweet and kind of magical,” Ross said. “From that moment on, we were together.”

Ross described their relationship as having a quality of “puppy love” to it, where she always wanted to be around him. When he worked security at Conga, a Latin bistro in northeast Minneapolis, Ross would walk in while he was working. She’d dance by him sometimes and they’d share a meal. 

Floyd, as both Ross and his uncle Selwyn Jones told MinnPost, had a playful sense of humor. Ross, who says she gets scared easily, remembered how he stood behind doors, shouting “boo” or screaming to frighten her. 

“I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re so 12 years old,’” said Ross, laughing. “He was always laughing and making things feel light and fun. He was the life of the party.” 

“He wasn’t (a) big, mean dude,” said Jones of his nephew. “He didn’t have (a) growl or snarl to him. He was just always funny.”

One of Jones’ favorite memories of his nephew, who he called Perry, was when Floyd met Jones’ mother-in-law. Jones and his family – his wife and two young children, along with his mother-in-law – took a drive to Minneapolis from South Dakota. Jones’ mother-in-law, a “lily-white girl from Gettysburg, South Dakota,” who had “probably only been around 10 Black people at one time” was now in front of a Salvation Army mission where throngs of people – most Black – were sitting, waiting and walking around. 

Floyd, seeing that Jones’ mother-in-law was nervous, took it upon himself to take her on a walk outside the mission.  

“She was looking and she was clutching her purse and Perry was walking with her and said ‘Come on Mom, it’s OK, Mom,” Jones laughed, remembering the look on his mother-in-law’s face when Floyd asked her to open the car door and take a walk with him.

“She wasn’t racist or anything, she just hadn’t been around that many people that were Black at one time. And it was funny as crap.” 

On May 25, 2020,  Floyd was murdered by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin outside Cup Foods, now known as Unity Foods, a grocery store in south Minneapolis. That’s when Floyd became George Floyd – when the man who prayed and played pranks died, and a movement for racial justice was born in his name.

When Jones saw on television that a Black man had been murdered in Minneapolis, he didn’t realize at first that it was his nephew who had died. After all, he’d never really called him George. Even before he realized it was his nephew who had been murdered, however, Jones was angry. The murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery had only happened 74 and 93 days prior, respectively.

“I was pissed off, to say the least. And to find out that that young man was somebody that I had just left in Minneapolis two weeks prior – it sparked the chain of events in my life that will never be the same,” said Jones. 

Jones, who still lives in South Dakota, now devotes his time to fighting for racial justice. He is the chief executive director of Justice 929, a foundation that combats systemic racism and injustices and hosts a podcast, “Setting it Straight with Selwyn Jones,” where he interviews those who have lost loved ones to murder, police brutality and incarceration, as well as those advocating for justice in a variety of spheres. Currently, in addition to combatting police brutality and racism, Jones is advocating for missing persons, mental health awareness and tackling domestic violence. 

Jones has also advocated in particular for medical civil rights bills and legislation, which would mandate that medical assistance be provided to those who express a need for medical assistance during a police encounter. Bills like these, Jones said, would have prevented the deaths of not only his nephew, but of other Black people at the hands of law enforcement. 

Jones will be returning to Minneapolis this weekend, to “go to a concert, see a gala, and have my heart tugged on.” He’ll do what he does each time he arrives: stand for a while at 38th & Chicago, the place where his nephew took his final breaths. 

“I always have to go and stand by that spot and just know that he left right here for a reason,” said Jones. “And that is for the world to have a better chance to be equal.” 

For Ross, it’s only recently that she’s felt as though she’s healing. 

“I can get through an interview like this without falling apart,” she said. “I can talk about Floyd without crying my eyes out. I can get through the days, go to work and be a positive role model for other people. It was over the past year that that happened fully.”

In the past year, Ross’ mother was diagnosed with and later survived cancer. Ross, in caring for her mother, realized that she could care for others and for herself. 

“I had already been working so hard on trying to get better and take care of myself and going to grief therapy and all the things that you’re supposed to do, but I hadn’t had that radical shift, and (caring for my mother) really gave me that shift where I could see myself being productive again in this world,” explained Ross. Beforehand, she felt as though she might “live life trapped in that grief.” 

Since his death, Ross feels Floyd’s presence guiding her, a guardian angel leading her not where she necessarily wants to be, but where she needs to be. During the first memorial for Floyd, she was placed at the back of the auditorium. While she was initially upset to be placed in the back, sitting there allowed her to connect with the mothers and spouses of others murdered by police. 

“I sat next to them and they took me in from that moment,” said Ross. “They lifted me up, they prayed with me. They supported me from that moment. I thought, ‘These are my new sisters.’” 

It was through these women that Ross became involved with Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence. Through the organization, she’s been able to meet with and support others who have lost loved ones as a result of police brutality.

“The police are everywhere and they are supposed to be the people that are there to protect us. And when something like this happens, you have to face every day knowing that they’re out there and you have to see them everywhere,” said Ross. “It’s very traumatizing. Working with the families that have been through that has been key, not only to helping them, but really helping myself. I think I’m going out to help, and then what really ends up happening is a mutual exchange because we lean on each other.”

While Ross is active in the movement for change and justice, she said she can’t let the movement change who Floyd was to her. 

“If I start to take in too much of the movement, I get overwhelmed. I forget to just love him for who he was and who he is to me now,” said Ross. “I have to really keep that connection sacred. Sometimes I will participate in things that have to do with George Floyd, but they are hard for me. They’re a lot heavier for me. I take on a lot of people’s emotions and their heartaches because so many people were heartbroken when he died. We’re talking about billions of people in this world that suffered because of his death.”

It’s a situation that not many people go through – to have their loved one become both person and symbol. But Ross knows other women have been in this position before. 

“I would think of Corretta Scott King, how she was married to Martin Luther King, but he was a movement. He was a man that was beyond this world, but she knew him just as someone she loved. I’m sure she had to separate that too,” said Ross. “And then I would think of JFK and I would think of how his wife would handle herself in these big moments.”

For her own wellbeing, there are two Floyds. There’s the George Floyd movement for racial justice and equity, and then there’s the man – the “big teddy bear” who prayed with Ross in a Salvation Army and waited behind doors to scare her. 

“To this day he is the love of my life,” said Ross.

---

Editor’s note: This article was written by Deanna Pistono for MinnPost.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. MinnPost is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization dedicated to high-quality journalism for people who care about Minnesota.

For more coverage of the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, visit MinnPost.com.