The protests and unrest that Americans are witnessing in all 50 states began with eight minutes and 46 seconds in a city that prides itself on progressiveness. It’s also a place I know well: Minneapolis. I lived there for five years while studying journalism and philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

The scenes of confrontation between protesters and the police in front of burning stores I once shopped at seem unrecognizable to me. But then again, I lived there as a young white man and was far removed from the experiences of George Floyd and others like him. The possibility that anyone — let alone myself — might find his neck under the crushing knee of a police officer never occurred to me. Had I better known the city’s black history, it might have.

One thing I didn’t realize is that during the “long, hot summer” of 1967, black residents of Minneapolis staged a small uprising over another incident of police brutality. As Rashad Shabazz, a human geographer at Arizona State University, explains, the National Guard was called in. In looking for answers to what happened, city officials missed an opportunity to heal, planting the seeds of what led to Floyd’s death and today’s turmoil.

This week we also liked articles about autocratic leaders who use religion as a political tool, some positive changes many families are experiencing around the dinner table and the far-right groups out to hijack protests against racist policing.