A George Floyd hologram made an appearance in Birmingham over the weekend, with a projected image of the man killed by Minneapolis Police on May 25 hovering in Kelly Ingram Park, using the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church as a backdrop.
Don’t be surprised if you missed it, though. It happened on Saturday night, from 9 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., with no advance publicity.
Even the pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church wasn’t aware of it.
“It’s the first time I’ve heard about it,” the Rev. Arthur Price, pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, said this afternoon when contacted by telephone. “I didn’t even know it happened.”
That was by design, organizers said.
The demonstration in lights was a project of Change.org and the George Floyd Foundation, an organization founded by Floyd’s family members to promote racial justice.
“We made a decision at the last minute to do something quiet in Birmingham and not do a big reveal,” said Alaina Curry, media manager for Change.org.
The “hologram” is actually a projection on a mesh screen that creates the illusion of an image in lights floating in the air.
It was projected with Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in the background because of the church’s symbolism as a headquarters of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, and the place where four little girls were killed when the church was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963.
“If you’re looking straight at the church (from Kelly Ingram Park), you would have seen it,” Curry said.
It’s not even clear if anyone besides the crew saw it.
“Where the church is, it’s a pretty quiet area,” Curry said. “I don’t believe the crew got any reaction from anyone.”
That obscure presentation was to avoid any unpleasant or controversial scenes as have happened in other showings of the image.
Birmingham was strictly symbolic, Curry said.
“We wanted to keep that one (in Birmingham) a little more quiet,” she said. “We’ve had a little bit of opposition. Because of those experiences, and in protection of the crew, we wanted to keep it quiet, not create any type of tension, end it peacefully.”
Birmingham was the finale of a five-stop showing.
It was unveiled to the Floyd family in Richmond, Va., in a private showing, followed by a public showing Tuesday at the site where a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was removed.
“That was the first event of the launch,” Curry said.
Then the display moved to Asheville, N.C., on Wednesday and to the site of a former Confederate monument at Decatur Square in Atlanta on Friday before ending in Birmingham, she said.
“We wanted to give the symbolic shot,” with the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in the background in Birmingham, she said.
‘”That was our main goal, to give the symbolism, rather than a public type of situation,” Curry said.
The George Floyd Hologram Memorial Project was the first major project of the George Floyd Foundation, which was started in June in Houston, she said.
“This was one of the first official initiatives,” Curry said. “It was an official partnership with his family.”
The event in Richmond, Va., set off tensions when an older white woman walking through the park used the “N-word,” followed by people at the scene shouting at her to leave.
A video of Floyd’s death, with a police officer kneeling on his neck, set off nationwide protests of police brutality that have continued through the summer.