The Pulitzer Prizes, administered and awarded by Columbia University for achievements in journalism, drama, music, and photography, handed out prizes on Friday to a number of noteworthy institutions and individuals. But one honor, in particular, stands out: The Pulitzer Board gave a special citation to Darnella Frazier, the then-17-year-old who used her mobile phone last May to record then-police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, killing him.
The Pulitzer’s announcement said that her award was “for courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”
During Chauvin’s murder trial, which included Frazier’s video as evidence, the young woman testified off-camera and “gave at times tearful testimony,” according to the Washington Post.
“When I look at George Floyd, I [look at] my dad,” she said when asked how taking the video had affected her life. “I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them.”
Special citations and awards at the Pulitzers are not unheard of: Frazier makes the 45th, putting her in the company of extraordinary individuals such as John Coltrane, George Gershwin, Ray Bradbury, E.B. White, Alex Haley, Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, and “the Cartographers of the United States of America.”
This year’s Pulitzer winners include Robert Greene of the Los Angeles Times for editorial writing, Wesley Morris of the New York Times for criticism (his second win), and Louise Erdrich for fiction prize, for her novel The Night Watchman. The Associated Press won for breaking news photography and Minneapolis’s Star Tribune won for breaking news photography.
Film critic Amy Taubin gave her top prize in the Best Films of 2020 in Artforum to “the handy, affordable-to-everyone, moving-image camera.” She noted that the “year’s most powerful footage was not mediated by artists but was transmitted raw from the cell phones of citizens like Darnella Frazier, who, by turning their lens on acts of injustice, have mobilized us against state power in numbers never before seen.”
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