Photography from Minneapolis

Minneapolis Uprising – May 2022

George Floyd Square memorials, fire-scarred Lake Street storefronts, and downtown Minneapolis in May 2022

May 1–31, 2022 Minneapolis

Two years after George Floyd's murder on May 25, 2020, the neighborhoods at the center of the unrest — Lake Street, Chicago Avenue, and the blocks surrounding the Third Precinct on Minnehaha Avenue — remained visibly marked by what had happened there. The burned-out US Bank branch on Lake Street still stood gutted, its vault open to the elements and graffiti across its interior walls.

The Third Precinct building itself, set ablaze by protesters on May 28, 2020, had not reopened. By spring 2022 it remained fortified behind concrete barriers and razor wire, its entrance sealed. A Metro Transit bus shelter across the street bore graffiti reading "Never Forget May 28" — placed there on the exact second anniversary of the precinct fire.

The two-year mark brought public commemoration alongside the still-unresolved grief. On May 25, the intersection of Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street was formally renamed George Perry Floyd Square, with new street signs installed as the community gathered for an Angelversary Candlelight Vigil at the Say Their Names Cemetery. George Floyd's brother Terrence Floyd attended. Three days later, the Rise and Remember festival filled the square with vendors, a choir, and an orchestra, drawing residents back to a site that had functioned as an autonomous protest zone for months after the 2020 unrest.

The period also reflected tensions that had accumulated beyond the Floyd case. Razor wire still surrounded the parking ramp at Lake Street and Girard Avenue in Uptown, installed after the June 2021 shooting death of Winston Smith by a federal task force at that location. A mural sketch was going up on the exterior of the Target store on East Lake Street, while construction crews were expanding the Karmel Mall nearby — repair and growth unfolding in the same corridor where so much had burned.

Year Index

Built in Minneapolis

Minneapolis Photographer

Browse by location, move through long-running series, or start with recent work.