The murder of George Floyd 5 years on. Taking the Knee, inventing & reinventing traditions
It is five years, 25th May 2020, since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer.
His death sparked a powerful black lives matter movement, and reinvented a tradition
Taking the knee is quite a recent protest tradition. Its modern origin can be traced back to Martin Luther King who in 1965 with others took the knee after he was arrested for protesting on voting rights.
It gained support in the US often involving sports players kneeling rather than standing for the US national anthem:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._national_anthem_protests_(2016%E2%80%93present)
It had not previously been much taken up in the UK not least because in most contexts there isn’t much concern if people don’t stand up for God Save the King or mumble their way through the words at sporting events.
After the murder of George Floyd taking knee has become a symbol of standing racism and injustice.
In that sense, as the seminal work on tradition by George Rude and Terence Ranger argued a tradition has been invented, and all the best traditions are invented.
That said there is an historical precedent.
January 1819 at the Manchester Theatre Royal, soldiers attacked Henry Hunt supporters who refused to uncover, take off their white hats for God Save The King, just months before the Peterloo Massacre took place in August 1819 where Hunt was the speaker.
That’s one of the issues with inventing traditions of protest. If you look hard enough you can often find someone has done something similar before but it wasn’t carried on. Hopefully this time it will be until justice prevails. There is still a lot of work to do
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