George Floyd: a community leader

In 2015, George Floyd helped Tiffany Cofield understand a rash of violence. Cofield was a teacher at the Hope Academy Charter School, just a mile and a half from Cuney Homes in the Third Ward, where the violent crime rate was three times higher than that of all of Houston (1,026 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants). Street brawls between rival gangs broke out in the high school’s hallways nearly every day.

“It got to the point where education could barely happen without some kind of disruption,” says Cofield. “And I didn’t know how to handle it or why there was so much tension.” A student recommended she ask a certain ‘Big Floyd’ for help.

“I was so confused and like, ‘Who is ‘Big Floyd’ and why do I need to talk to him?’” she asked. “They would say: ‘For real Ms. Cofield. ‘Big Floyd’ can help you.’”

Finally, she called him. Floyd asked Cofield to meet him at the Wendy’s in the Third Ward—an area notorious for crime. “To be honest, I was nervous, I was scared,” she says. “I lived around the Third Ward area but never that side of the Third Ward. It is a very difficult area to be in. And he was just like, ‘Pull up.’ I’m like, ‘Pull up?’ Who says ‘Just pull up’ to the worst area in the city?”

A mural on Holman street, two minutes away from Cuney Homes, where Floyd often hung out in the afternoons with other locals. Foto: Federica Narancio / Univision.

The two came from different worlds. Cofield grew up with both her parents under the same roof; both had various college degrees and well-paying jobs. She attended resourced schools in Houston that had sports programs. She also has a college degree—in Communications, Culture and Media from Howard University. She studied Education to work as a teacher at Hope Academy, a school owned by her father.

Tiffany Cofield was friends with Floyd and one of his older sisters, LaTonya. She recalls that they were both “really claustrophobic.” LaTonya won’t travel on airplanes or ride elevators. George didn’t tolerate small spaces. If he was going to take a long trip, he would do so by car only.

But that afternoon, when they drove to Floyd’s mother’s house near Cuney Homes to chat in Cofield’s black Cadillac SRX, their differences didn’t matter. They had one thing in common: an interest in putting a stop to the fighting so that students could attend class. Floyd helped Cofield understand why some of her students were so “aggressive or upset.”

“There was a lot of backstory that I didn’t know between different students whose older siblings or older cousins were murdered by the other side and why a lot of that tension was there,” recalls Cofield. “He let me know there were a couple of students whose parents were incarcerated, one if not both parents had legal problems, grandmother is raising them, grandmother is a diabetic or is on dialysis, grandmother only has a few more months to live, they might miss school because they have kids of their own and they were 15 and they have children.”

Tiffany Cofield was friends with Floyd and one of his older sisters, LaTonya. She recalls that they were both “really claustrophobic.” LaTonya won’t travel on airplanes or ride elevators. George didn’t tolerate small spaces. If he was going to take a long trip, he would do so by car only.

The conversation lasted almost four hours. As they said their goodbyes, Floyd offered to participate in basketball games and in various community projects with the students. “George played a very big role in helping me reach a lot of the young men because I’m not a man and I’m not a parent,” Cofield says. “So, I don’t necessarily know how to reach and engage with some of them. I didn’t grow up in Cuney Homes. So I didn’t necessarily know the dynamics of some of the things they were going through.”

That day also marked the start of their friendship. Cofield says that after Floyd got involved, the brawls subsided. Allying with Floyd made it easier for her to reach out to students and to advocate for them.

"I wasn’t just saying it. … But I’m actually here in your community, in the projects, in the hood, with you, with ‘Big Floyd,’” she said. “And so that provided some of them with a different perspective of how genuine I was about helping them."

Cofield believes that Floyd, who she calls “a leader,” offered to help her because he saw something of himself in Cofield’s students. He’d been arrested various times and struggled with drug addiction.

She adds: “Being older and going through life’s challenges and experiencing different things, he saw that you could still make choices that could change your future.”

In 1940, Cuney Homes became the first low-income public housing project built by the Houston Housing Authority (HHA). It began serving mostly residents of color—and still does today.

Jeffrey Lowe, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and a researcher on racial equity in housing, explains that the project provided an opportunity for African Americans moving from rural to urban areas. But due to racist policies and a lack of public investment, by the 1960s, residents were among the region’s poorest and least educated. Many Cuney Homes residents began to move to other areas of the city.

A group of ladies in a Cuney Homes garden in this October 1994 photo. Earlie Hudnall / PDNB Gallery

“You had a concentration of poverty in one area and public policies didn’t support the eradication of racial segregation,” says Lowe.

That was the case even after the end of Jim Crow in 1965—and remains so today. Cuney Homes has never received government investments in line with those given to predominantly white areas nearby.

To push for greater equity, Lowe says policies should mandate that a certain percentage of employees of the nearby Houston Medical Center are hired from low-income neighborhoods like Cuney Homes. Also, policies should ensure that gentrifying areas in the Third Ward—an area southeast of downtown, where mansions sit next to run-down homes—offer between 10% and 20% of affordable rental housing, he says.

George Floyd was Pastor Patrick Ngwolo’s ticket into Cuney Homes in 2014. After all, it’s not easy for a stranger to come into the community alone—any visitor needs an ally.

“We wanted to dig really deep roots in Cuney Homes … to develop people spiritually, physically, emotionally,” Ngwolo says. “But none of that work was possible without someone who says, ‘Hey, these guys are cool, they’re good, they’re not here to investigate you. They’re just here to help.’”

First, they worked together to organize a basketball tournament. Floyd encouraged his neighbors not to engage in violence during practice hours. He also formed a team with several of his friends: “Since they played, everybody played,” recalls Ngwolo. Floyd’s team won, beating out a group of 20-somethings.

From then on, Ngwolo and his colleagues were welcomed back to Cuney Homes. They began holding regular religious services and building relationships. They sat down with mothers and grandmothers seeking support for their children, and helped young people find a way out of the community. One man, who was originally from Mexico and dreamed of pursuing an education, is now a stockbroker on Wall Street. It was thanks in large part to Floyd, Ngwolo says.

Ngwolo calls Floyd’s story one of “redemption” and “sacrifice,” evidenced by his determination to help anyone he could, his efforts to succeed in college or, ultimately, his 100-mile trek to Minnesota to obtain a truck driver’s license to “really do something with his life.” Floyd’s story also includes mistakes, Ngwolo says, as well as his final moments spent begging four Minneapolis cops to let him breathe.

“We are in the process of becoming whatever we’ve been divinely assigned to be,” Ngwolo says. “We all have a start and we all have a finish. And I think his finish was greater than his start.”

It takes about an hour to walk through Cuney Homes. There are two stores to buy food; one of them, the Scott Food Mart, is open 24/7 and is a neighborhood meeting place. People go there to buy things like hot dogs, cleaning supplies, pancake mix, rice and alcoholic beverages. Many like to hang out and gamble. Nearby is Yates Middle School and Blackshear Elementary. There’s also a Wendy’s, old Baptist churches and community centers.

Some residents say the only way out of Cuney Homes is through sports or music. Others mention drug dealing. You can always find kids shooting hoops on the basketball court, and the streets are often the set of local rap and hip hop videos.

Cal Wayne looked up to George Floyd. He was his first role model—Wayne saw Floyd as an older brother or even a father figure. “That’s who taught me everything, like as far as music, as far as life... he raised me,” says the Houstonian rapper. “There was nobody like him.”

Their families met at Cuney Homes and were very close. When Wayne's mother went to prison, Floyd’s mother Cissy took in Wayne, who was 12 at the time, and his brother, 11. So many of his best childhood memories took place in that apartment, 31-D.

“In our neighborhood there was a lot of violence and bad stuff going on, and George was the first person that was kind of positive,” says Cal Wayne, who wears red in this photo from his teens. Courtesy Cal Wayne

While Floyd went to school and excelled at almost every sport, Wayne did whatever it took to support his brother: he delivered newspapers, cleaned a Burger King parking lot in Houston and also did “bad things” that he prefers not to mention. “Me being the oldest boy, like how we're raised in the ghetto, the mentality is I had to be the man of the house,” he says. “So I became a man at like 10 years old. I was running the streets ... My childhood was rough. We went without food, we were poor. I’ve seen it all. Anything you can think of, I might have seen it.”

“In our neighborhood there was a lot of violence and bad stuff going on, and George was the first person that was kind of positive,” says Cal Wayne, who wears red in this photo from his teens. Courtesy Cal Wayne

At that age, many children dream of having a toy or dressing up like a superhero. Not Wayne. At some point he wanted to be an astronaut or a musician, but he didn't have time for distractions: "My dream was just not to be hungry any more,” he says. “Like I said, I came up really rough. I came up rougher than everybody else... My only goal was to survive.”

Wayne doesn’t have any family members who are still alive. His parents, cousins and brother were shot and killed while he served almost nine years of jail time for three different crimes.

His songs tell his life story. In “Welcome Me Back,” he expresses how much he longed to be released from jail. “They don’t know how much I’ve prayed for this,” he says. In the video, he raps while loved ones greet him on the streets near Cuney Homes: LaTonya Floyd, Tiffany Cofield, rapper Thae Tha Truth and Christopher Hutchins, one of his closest friends who was murdered last month. Former Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo also appears. The video was recorded in February and features a mural of Floyd that was inaugurated that same day outside Yates High School, where Floyd studied.

Since he didn’t excel at sports, Wayne began using music as an escape at age seven. First he sang at church. At 10 he started rapping on the streets. At 26, he released his first commercial album. Even while he was in prison, he never stopped coming up with songs, writing the lyrics in notebooks and on napkins, or whatever he could find in his cell or in common spaces.

Floyd was part of his security team at concerts, a fan behind the scenes and appeared in his videos. While they were together in prison—when Floyd was incarcerated for aggravated robbery—he’d give Wayne feedback on his songs. “He's always telling me, ‘Man, you got too much talent, man,’” Wayne said. “Music really was my thing... When he finally heard it, he never left my side.”

Cal Wayne is one of the most recognized rappers in Third Ward and in Houston. In 2012 he recorded his first professional album. Since then, he has released six more. Courtesy of JoBreaNeal

Music gave Wayne the respect he had longed for. Now, many young people from Cuney Homes and “the ghetto” view him with the same admiration that he felt for Floyd. “I wanted to change, I wanted to be somebody. That’s the only goal coming from the ghetto: being somebody that the neighborhood can respect. I do want to be a motivation for somebody that grew up like me.”

A group of children from Cuney Homes at a nearby pool. Among them, a 14-year-old Stephanie Torres in a red t-shirt. Courtesy of Stephanie Torres Square

At Cuney Homes, neighbors help one another. When someone doesn’t have food, others share what’s on their table; when a parent is incarcerated, others take their child in.

Quianta Moore, an expert in child health policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, says that the Third Ward is a resilient community in spite of the many challenges that residents face.

In this 1992 photograph of Cuney Homes, residents await the arrival of an annual parade in the historic Third Ward neighborhood. Earlie Hudnall/PDNB Gallery

“That type of prosocial behavior really is important for mitigating against factors like low income and disparities with employment and food insecurity,” she explains. With support structures—whether a parent, mentor or organization—in place, young people have a better chance of overcoming poor academic performance and being successful.

Moore says the community would also benefit from greater public investment, and recommends that the American Rescue Plan proposed by President Joe Biden include social and psychological support programs for schools and parents. “It’s not easy being a parent, particularly when you’re low income and have all the stress and strain of housing instability and food insecurity.”

A few days after George Floyd’s murder, the community decided to honor him with a mural painted by Sylvia and Álex Román, mother and son, on the side wall of the Scott Food Mart. Since then, it has become a meeting point for Torres and her old friends, but also a place of tribute and respect.

“This thing that happened to him could have happened to anyone,” she says. “He was treated like less than a human.”

Torres married a Black man from a Third Ward family. Together, they have three sons: 15-year-old twins and a 13 year old. She works hard so they can achieve their dreams.

Ever since Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, she advises her sons that if they ever face the police, the most important thing is simply to “survive the experience.” By staying alive, they can fight for justice.

In many Black communities, the fear of encountering police is real: at some point every family has a conversation about what to do if stopped on the street. Floyd’s death further confirmed their fears.

According to Mapping Police Violence, 28% of those who died at the hands of the police in 2020 were Black, despite being only 13% of the total population. According to the organization’s estimates, people of color are three times more likely than whites to be victims of these fatal confrontations. In most cases, the killings occur at traffic stops, while carrying out a mental health check or after calls for domestic disputes or reports of minor offenses.

George Floyd meant the world to LaTonya. As a baby, he glowed, she says. When they were kids, he enjoyed playing hide and seek, and at just five years old, he could already hit a ball. The family slept on the same mattress, huddled on the floor, all together. Each child had three sets of clothes. They were poor.

George Floyd hugged by his mother Cissy. Courtesy LaTonya Floyd

She is proud that her brother was the first of the Floyds to go to college thanks to his passion for sports. He always promised he’d become well-known as a rapper or basketball player: “He was going to lift the family out of poverty,” she remembers. “‘We are not going to eat any more banana sandwiches,’ he told us.”

George Floyd abrazado por su madre Cissy. Cortesía LaTonya Floyd

In a way, George kept his promise, says LaTonya—because the world has been talking about him since May 25, 2020. She just regrets it was because of such “brutality.”

A week before Chauvin pressed Floyd against the pavement with his knee, LaTonya and George sang and laughed over the phone. When they saw each other in person, at Cuney Homes or elsewhere, they danced and sang, sat in the street talking and made fun of each other: “We were very close,” she says.

LaTonya Floyd speaks during her brother’s funeral at Fountain of Praise Church on June 9, 2020, in Houston, Texas. Getty Images

Since George was murdered, LaTonya says she is always sad. “I will never be the same again,” she says, crying.

On April 20, 2021, the day that Chauvin was found guilty of her brother’s murder, LaTonya says she nearly fainted in the Hennepin County courtroom. Though she felt justice was being served as the officer was placed in handcuffs, it will never bring back George.

La Tonya has decided to look towards the future—because she is sure that is what her brother would have wanted. She is encouraged by the movement his death ignited.