Samuels, Robert

Robert Samuels is a national political enterprise reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on the intersection of politics, policy, and people. He joined the Post in 2011 after spending nearly five years working at the Miami Herald. In His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking), Samuels and co-author Toluse Olorunnipa examine the tragically familiar events of May 25, 2020, when George Floyd was added to the list of Black Americans killed by police when he was murdered outside a Minneapolis convenience store by a white officer. The video recording of his death awakened millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend striving for a better life. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, Olorunnipa and Samuels examine Floyd’s family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the over-policing of his community, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction. His Name Is George Floyd places its subject’s narrative within the context of the country’s legacy of institutional racism.