Darnella Frazier, the shy Minneapolis teen who ignited an international uprising when she videotaped George Floyd’s last breaths, has received one of the nation’s highest awards in American journalism.
Frazier, 18, wearing blue sweatpants and a hoodie on that fateful day, was an innocent bystander who happened to be in proximity to George Floyd’s arrest debacle on Memorial Day 2020. As she screamed at ex-officer Derek Chauvin to get his knee off of Floyd’s neck, she pulled out her cellphone and began capturing real-time evidence that would trigger a major sociopolitical movement worldwide as well as a racial reckoning.
For her valor and quick thinking, Frazier was catapulted from obscurity to a national social media influencer with more than 140K followers on Instagram. Moreover, Frazier was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Friday, June 11 for “courageously recording” the fatality, Yahoo! News reports.
The Pulitzer Prize board announced it was awarding Frazier a special citation for the video she shot on May 25, 2020. The board said Frazier’s video “spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens [and] journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”
In related news, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune earned a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage in the aftermath of Floyd’s murder, Yahoo! News stated.
Chauvin, as most now know, was convicted of murder charges in April 2021. He will be sentenced in the summer of 2021.
The other three officers on the scene that harrowing day in May 2020 – J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao – will face trial in 2022 on charges of aiding and abetting a murder for standing idly by as Chauvin took Floyd’s life.
