Olorunnipa, Toluse

Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House bureau chief for The Washington Post, which he joined in 2019 and where has covered three presidencies. He previously worked at Bloomberg reporting on politics and policy from Washington and Florida. In His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking), Olorunnipa and co-author Robert Samuels 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.