Good Friday and the Salvation of America

It was truly a Good Friday. Major League Baseball joined the corporate exodus from Georgia to protest state Republicans’ legislative attack on voting rights (are you listening Texas, Florida, Arizona etc?) America passed the 100 million mark in Covid vaccinations, nearly 40 precent of the eligible adult population, with authorities widening the net to all adults and adolescents in coming weeks. And perhaps most important, Lt. Richard Zimmerman – the longest serving officer in the Minneapolis Police Department—testified that Derek Chauvin’s brutal treatment of George Floyd was “uncalled for.” Since police almost always close ranks in cases like this, Zimmerman’s frank testimony was “extraordinary” in the words of the New York Times correspondents covering the trial. The Minneapolis police chief -- who has called the killing of Floyd “murder”-- is expected to go even further on the witness stand.

The George Floyd trial is as an accounting for America’s soul as well as a reckoning for Chauvin. Will the country finally declare that the police war on Black citizens must come to an end? The street protests that swept the nation after Floyd’s shocking killing last year did feel like a turning point, that enough people were finally so disgusted by the rampant violence against African Americans to truly change policing in the U.S. It wasn’t just Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who recorded the suffocation of Floyd, who was traumatized by his murder – it was all Americans with a heart and soul.

So we’ll now see whether at long last America has a sense of decency. Will the honest testimony of Chauvin’s colleagues and eyewitnesses lead to his conviction?

The meaning of “Good Friday” puzzles many people, even devout Christians. What’s so good about the day when Jesus was horribly executed by officials of the Roman Empire? “Good” in this historical context meant “holy,” scholars will tell you. The suffering and death of Christ was meant to save humankind. And the martyrdom of George Floyd is another test of our nation’s soul.