George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd had used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, on May 25, 2020. Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for over nine minutes, fatally asphyxiating him. After his murder, a series of protests against police brutality, especially towards Black people, quickly spread globally and across the United States. His dying words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying slogan.