02 May 2021
Some of America's historically Black colleges have seen major upticks in donations, following a year that has been hallmarked by a reckoning on race after the murder of George Floyd, NPR reports.
Driving the news: North Carolina A&T State University, the country's largest HBCU, has raised $88 million since last summer — nearly six times what it fundraises annually, per NPR. "There has not been a year like that ever in our history," N.C. A&T associate vice chancellor Todd Simmons told the outlet.
- "Nor has there been a year like that in the history of nearly any other public HBCU in America."
The president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which supports and represents HBCU's said they've had "a record-breaking year" in terms of donations as they started to pick up last year in the wake of Floyd's killing: "We have never, ever seen anything like this for HBCUs."
- The colleges have also received federal help from congress' COVID-19 relief laws, in addition to seeing a boom in donations. The American Rescue Plan passed in March gave some $3 billion to HBCUs, tribal colleges and minority-serving schools.
Flashback: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin announced last year a $120 million donation to the United Negro College Fund, Spelman College and Morehouse College — the largest recorded individual gift to support scholarships.
Why it matters: HBCU's have small endowments compared with other institutions, with none valued at $1 billion in 2019. They also generally saw a drop in enrollment amid the pandemic.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.