In September 1966, a white San Francisco police officer shot and killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed 16-year-old Black boy in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood whom he suspected of stealing a car.
Within hours, outrage stirred the community to action, culminating in a three-day uprising that saw widespread looting, a citywide curfew and 2,000 National Guard soldiers dispatched to keep order.
The Bayview-Hunters Point uprising is far too big a story to condense for a single episode, but the parallels between the killings of Matthew Johnson and George Floyd are so strong, I couldn’t leave it alone.