HOW OUR WORLD CHANGED.

• Author: Bubar, Joe
• Position: NATIONAL

Massive protests over the killing of George Floyd have sparked a moment of racial reckoning in America. What will happen next?

When 15-year-old Kennedy Green learned about the death of George Floyd this past May, she was outraged. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes, slowly suffocating him. Video of the killing sent shockwaves across the country--and prompted Kennedy, who is Black, to take action.

She and five other teenage girls organized a Black Lives Matter protest in Nashville, Tennessee, to call for an end to police violence and racism. The rally, which attracted 10,000 people, was one of the largest against white supremacy ever held in the city, and people of all races joined in it.

"I'm happy a lot of people are realizing that there's a problem with the system," says Kennedy. "I don't want to see kids after us have to protest."

Kennedy is among the millions of people who've marched and rallied in the wake of Floyd's death. The protests, which have taken place all across America and spread around the globe, began as demonstrations against police violence toward Black people. But before long, they touched nearly all aspects of American life--prompting changes to everything from flags and monuments to food brands and sports.

"It looks, for all the world, like these protests are achieving what very few do: setting in motion a period of significant, sustained, and widespread social, political change," says Douglas McAdam, a professor at Stanford University who studies social movements.

Flags, Statues & Mascots

Floyd's death followed on the heels of other highly publicized killings of Black Americans, including Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. There's a long history of police violence targeting Black Americans, and Black activists have continually protested racism in policing, criminal justice, and many other aspects of U.S. society.

But the three recent killings brought widespread attention to the issues. And they sparked a movement unlike any this country has seen since at least the 1960s.

Polls conducted in June suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the U.S. had by then participated in the demonstrations. That would make the movement the largest in American history, according to some experts. The protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United...