Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded George Floyd’s death on her cellphone last year, was awarded a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize board Friday.
What You Need To Know
- Darnella Frazier, the teen who recorded George Floyd’s death on her cellphone last year, was awarded a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize board Friday
- Frazier was honored “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world,” the board said
- Last year’s racial reckoning in the U.S., as well as the coronavirus pandemic, were popular themes among this year’s Pulitzer winners
The Pulitzer Prize is the highest honor for U.S.-based journalists. Frazier does not work in the news media, but her video brought the unforgettable image of Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes into living rooms worldwide.
Frazier was honored “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice,” the Pulitzer board said.
The video also helped to secure Chauvin’s murder conviction. Not only was Frazier’s footage a key piece of evidence in the case, she also testified at the trial.
“A lot of people call me a hero even though I don’t see myself as one,” Frazier wrote on Facebook on May 25, the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death. “I was just in the right place at the right time. Behind this smile, behind these awards, behind the publicity, I’m a girl trying to heal from something I am reminded of every day.
“I was only 17 at the time, just a normal day for me walking my 9-year-old cousin to the corner store, not even prepared for what I was about to see, not even knowing my life was going to change on this exact day in those exact moments… it did,” she wrote. “It changed me. It changed how I viewed life. It made me realize how dangerous it is to be Black in America.”
Last year’s racial reckoning in the U.S., as well as the coronavirus pandemic, were popular themes among this year’s Pulitzer winners.
The staff at The Minneapolis Star Tribune won for breaking news reporting for its coverage of Floyd’s death and the events that followed.
The Associated Press photography staff won for its breaking news images of the response across the nation to Floyd’s death.
Wesley Morris of The New York Times was recognized for his criticism pieces on race and culture in America.
And Michael Paul Williams of The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch won for his “penetrating and historically insightful columns that led Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city’s monuments to white supremacy.”
For COVID-19 coverage, Ed Yong of The Atlantic won for explanatory reporting “that anticipated the course of the disease, synthesized complex challenges, illuminated the U.S. government’s failures and provided clear context for the challenges it posed.”
The New York Times won in the public service reporting category for its “courageous, prescient and sweeping coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that exposed racial and economic inequities, government failures in the U.S. and beyond, and filled a data vacuum that helped local governments, health care providers, businesses and individuals to be better prepared and protected.”
And AP photographer Emilio Morenatti received the feature photography award for his series on the elderly in Spain struggling during the pandemic.
