A cry from the heart

THERE ARE SOUNDS THAT HUMANS MAKE WITH INTENTION. Then there are the wordless sounds we make when our emotions take over—the sounds that, in their texture and tone, speak even more clearly.

“Guilty,” Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill said, reading the jury’s April 20 verdict on the first of three charges leveled against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Perry Floyd Jr. That’s when I heard those involuntary sounds come up and out.

It was the collective sound of shock, filtered through deep pain, followed by relief. It filled a third-floor Hilton Hotel ballroom, where Floyd’s family watched the local NBC station on a movie-theater-size screen. Many had come from distant places for this moment—Houston; Charlotte, N.C.; New York City. They’d carefully slipped away from the direct stares of the overwhelmingly white press that had begun to tail and track them. (Photojournalist Ruddy Roye and I, as well as a documentary team, were the only members of the media in the room.) They had gathered in that ballroom, with its collapsible walls and busily patterned carpet, because COVID-19 and security restrictions kept them from the