Five years ago today, for nine minutes and 29 seconds, former Officer Derek Chauvin mercilessly knelt on the neck of George Floyd. As Floyd’s agonizing cries of “I can’t breathe” echoed through the streets of Minneapolis, the lynching of a Black man at the hands of a system rooted in racism played across screens nationwide.

It reminded Black people that we were still fighting for the right to simply exist. The murders of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor showed us that, even in our homes and neighborhoods, we were not safe from systems built to criminalize and dehumanize Black lives.

Growing up in the Deep South, I learned early on about the enduring legacy of racial discrimination in America. My grandparents endured the daily injustices of segregated hospitals, schools, and restaurants that denied them service. My father was just 11 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I attended Spalding High School, which is named after Thomas Spalding, a former U.S. Representative who owned 400 enslaved Africans. Racism was not history; it was a living memory.

While our elders mourned the loss of Cynthia Scott and Jimmie Lee Jackson, we witnessed the murders of Taylor and Floyd at the hands of a new generation of police officers. The victims of racial violence sparked collective grief and calls to action across the country. Just as Black citizens marched in Detroit against police brutality almost 60 years prior, we took to the streets of Minneapolis to again demand justice for yet another unjustified police killing. Just as civil rights activists declared, “I Am a Man,” we cried, “Black Lives Matter.”

Floyd’s murder provided the nation with an opportunity to confront its dark history of racism and chart a new path forward that would radically transform the criminal legal system. Cities and states reimagined policing, reinvesting police budgets into community-based programs and other initiatives.

Officials in Austin reallocated $6.5 million from their police budget for supportive housing services for unhoused residents. City councils in Denver and

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