George Floyd's family members hugged each other tightly and shed tears of joy as the judge pronounced Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering him. "Say his name!" Floyd's relatives chanted as they entered the room, fists raised in the air.
"Today, we are able to breathe again," one of Floyd's younger brothers, Philonise, said during a news conference in Minneapolis after the verdict.
"He changed the world," Floyd's girlfriend Courteney Ross said in an interview.
The Floyd family attorney, Ben Crump, cast the verdict as a critical moment in America's troubled history of race, policing and criminal justice. "We frame this moment for all of us, not just for George Floyd," he said.