We were all in quarantine, hiding from an airborne virus that attacks the lungs, but that wasn’t the reason George Floyd couldn’t breathe. No, there was a police officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck, out in the street, all of us watching and left guessing which breath was his last. “Mama. I’m through,” he cried. We all heard him, every Black matriarch and woman, dead or alive. It reached Simonne Mitchelson in the rolling hills of Arroyo Grande. She watched the video once—that was all she could stomach. She remembers being in her living room, shaking uncontrollably with rage. When you are a Black woman, you know what happens when you hear a cry like that. The way it sinks into your bones and everything aches. Everything had been aching.
Mitchelson was 27 years old, a petite but long woman with olive skin, hazel eyes, and wavy brown curls that bounced off her cheekbones. She was born in Durban, South Africa, but her family moved to Michigan before she could ever remember her birthplace. At 17, her parents sent her to live with an aunt in Auckland, New Zealand, and study physical therapy, just like her mom. But the city was buzzing then, its team having won the Rugby World Cup
