Mapping a March for Racial Justice in the Pandemic Year

By Margaret Peacock, Jackson C. Foster, and Erik L. Peterson

Racial justice and police violence were at the fore of U.S. national discourse during the pandemic year. In protest of their uncle’s murder, the (non-biological) nephews of George Floyd, Cortez Rice and Tim Williams, marched from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., visiting the cities where Black Lives Matter protests were taking place. Their story, despite its significance, received little attention from scholars, pundits, and politicians alike, and has only been documented via social media. The interactive map below brings their route to light for the first time, displaying (1) where the Floyd nephews went and (2) what they said when they got to their locations. At each stop, Rice and Williams met — and grieved — with locals harmed by police brutality, faced an often-volatile mixture of hostility and support, and rallied for broad police and community reform through civil demonstrations.