Hello, I'm Nula McGovern on the BBC World Service, and this is BBC OS conversations about race in America.

This time, instead of coronavirus, we're covering another important story that has also had a global impact

and it's one that goes to the heart of an African-American man in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

To see George Floyd get murdered on camera, there was an understanding, I think, from particularly black people all over the country

that that kind of brutality would ultimately manifest in unrest.

The American actor George Clooney struck a chord when he wrote in the Daily Beast,

race is our pandemic. It infects all of us and in 400 years we've yet to find a vaccine.

The 400 years is a reference to the European slave ship that brought the first human cargo from Africa to the United States.

It took another 200 years before slavery was finally ended in 1863,

but even now discrimination and problems remain as a result of racism.

Police arrested an African-American man.

They forced him to the ground and held him there. Bystanders filmed

on their smartphones as the man's chest was compressed against the ground and he cried

out I can't breathe and eventually died. After the video was

shared it prompted marches and demonstrations but that man's name was not George Floyd. It was Eric Garner and his death

happened in New York six years ago. Eric's mother, Gwen Carr, has fought tirelessly for justice ever since, after no criminal

charges were brought against the police officers responsible.

This is how she felt on hearing about the death of George Floyd.

It was like not again.

It was deja vu.

How could this still be happening?

And it just gave me such a knot in my throat, a knot in my heart.

...