The Chauvin trial shows how much work it takes to win justice for Black people

When Judge Peter A. Cahill read the first conviction for second-degree murder in the case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd on May 25, I dropped to my knees in suspended anticipation. A sense of relief fell over me as Cahill read the second verdict, guilty for third-degree murder, confirming that I heard correctly the first time. By the time Cahill read the third verdict, guilty of manslaughter, I was turning angry, all in a matter of seconds.

A weird mix of emotions gripped me simultaneously: exuberance that justice was rendered for Floyd, but depression that justice eludes so many others; hope that the convictions represented a new day for police accountability, but despondence that it took such a gargantuan effort.

Only that gargantuan effort could have tipped the scale toward a unanimous conviction on all three charges, the first conviction of a White former police officer for killing a Black person in the history of the state of Minnesota. The question now is whether the rest of the nation is willing to acknowledge how temporary and anomalous justice usually is for Black Americans that it took so much work — by so many people — for Chauvin to pay the price for his crime. President Biden called the conviction "a unique and extraordinary convergence of factors," and he wasn't wrong.

Darnella Frazier's cellphone video not only captured the moment that convinced the country and the 12 jurors that Chauvin murdered Floyd, but the framing told the story in a way that other videos did not: the position of Chauvin's knee; the callous look on Chauvin's face; the duress Floyd was in; the lifelessness of his body once he was dead. The impressive cinematography of a 17-year-old eyewitness notwithstanding, what may have proved most important about her video was that she held the shot for an agonizing 8 minutes and 26 seconds out of a total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the official time Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's neck.

Next, admonishments and calls of concern from onlookers on 38th Street and Chicago in South Minneapolis proved that there was a heightened sense of alarm for Floyd's well-being and disabused the jury of the myth of angry Black bystanders or a riotous mob. Donald Williams, the mixed martial arts fighter, can be heard rebuking Chauvin about the effect of his pinned-down technique on Floyd. Williams even recalled seeing Chauvin shifting the weight of his body and knee on Floyd's neck to increase the leverage of his physical position. And what were the chances of an off-duty firefighter trained in CPR stumbling upon the scene and adding to the collective commentary of onlookers? Genevieve Hansen not only chided police officers but offered her services in real time, asking to take Floyd's pulse only to be rebuffed by Officer Tou Thao. And Christopher Martin, the young store clerk who accepted the allegedly counterfeit $20 bill, can be seen on the video holding his head in remorse, believing if he had just rejected the currency or placed it on his tab, the police would have never been called.

But all that might not have been enough to convict Chauvin. It also took the expert testimonies of medical and law enforcement professionals. People such as Martin Tobin, the pulmonologist who gave a lengthy but simplistic lesson on cardiac arrhythmia, explaining when and how Floyd's oxygen-starved body lost consciousness. The blue wall of silence usually serves as a protective shield in several ways, especially when it comes to officers testifying in court against one of their own. But Medaria Arradondo, the chief of Minneapolis police, offered courtroom seminars on the use of force, as did other law enforcement professionals who demonstrated that the action Chauvin took was indeed excessive.

Rendering justice in this case also required the awareness raised by social movement activism in Minneapolis and around the world, the advocacy of the Floyd family, the removal of the case from Hennepin County Prosecutor Mike Freeman to state Attorney General Keith Ellison, and a jury not only willing to be impartial, but one with the courage to convict. Too often in these cases, juries are rarely impartial; they seem more inclined to exonerate and acquit when the defendant is White. And ultimately, even all that might not have been enough — but the jury got another reminder of how common outrages such as Floyd's death are when the police in Brooklyn Center, Minn., killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, another Black man, as the Chauvin trial was underway.

If all that is what it takes to achieve the conviction of police officers who wantonly kill Black people, then the Chauvin conviction is an aberration, not the beginning of something different. I thought back Tuesday night to O.J. Simpson's acquittal on murder charges in 1995, thinking how the constellation of good fortunes lined up for him when it hadn't for so many Black men in the past. How many Black acquittals such as Simpson's have there been since 1995? I imagine not many. How many convictions such as Chauvin's will there be in the future? I imagine not many, either. Black lawmakers and the civil rights community are talking about a new day in police accountability, hoping that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act will pass Congress. But what's really telling is that the bill represents yet another example of the herculean effort required to render justice on behalf of Black Americans.

Keith A. Mayes is an associate professor of African American and African studies at the University of Minnesota. He is currently completing a book entitled "The Unteachables: Civil Rights, Disability Rights, and the Origins of Black Special Education." This piece was written for The Washington Post.