According to a new book -- His Name is George Floyd -- by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuel and Toluse Olorunnipa, George Floyd's ancestor Hillery Thomas Stewart, like many ambitious former enslaved men and women of the post-slavery era, worked hard and gained wealth; "but it was stripped away by unscrupulous businessmen and tax authorities during an era of racial terror."
The authors' point out that Stewart had amassed 500 acres of land in North Carolina. "The kind of thing you can give to your descendants and allow them to have a shot in life."
They say the the story is not unlike many descendants of African Americans, who played fair to achieve the American Dream, but were denied it due to Jim Crow America. Link: Center for Public Integrity
