| Robert Samuels was so floored by what he witnessed that went back to check his tape recorder. The national enterprise reporter was in Minneapolis to write a profile on Courteney Ross, George Floyd's girlfriend, as the trial over Floyd's killing was underway. The jury had not yet reached a verdict on Derek Chauvin, and Ross was worried it might not convict the former police officer of murdering the man she loved. Ross visited a fortuneteller for a reading. Samuels watched as the fortuneteller flipped over a tarot card and told Ross it was an encouragement that she was not being naive to hope for good things and that her grief would be over soon. Within seconds, Ross's phone buzzed with a call: The jury had reached a decision. Samuels and photographer Joshua Lott were shocked. The recording showed it had been just 39 seconds between the fortuneteller's pronouncement and the call. The reporter almost fainted. "If someone else said this had happened, you wouldn't believe them," Samuels said. That unbelievable moment was one of many that Samuels experienced while at Ross's side for nearly a month as the only reporter in the world to whom she granted access during Chauvin's murder trial.  Courteney Ross embraces her son before testifying in Derek Chauvin's trial for murder. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post) | Ross had just one condition for participating: That Samuels would not write anything until the trial concluded — she was afraid that her participation could spark a mistrial. The arrangement meant that about every other morning, the reporter and photographer would shadow Ross, interviewing her and observing her as she went about her day. That degree of access, for such a prolonged amount of time, allowed Ross's voice to shine, Samuels said — along with her insights about Floyd and the symbol he has become. When you spend that much time with a person, "you get to see how they interact with the world organically," Samuels said. And that makes the story more authentic. While his resulting story is very much about Ross, her relationship with Floyd and the testimony she delivered, the reporter said he was struck by the way that Ross's story was America's story. "The private pain she was feeling couldn't just be a private pain. It truly was interconnected with everything else." Read Samuels's profile of Courteney Ross — her worry that she'd be seen as "the white woman who ruined it" if Chauvin escaped conviction, her thought process as she picked a nail color with a jury in mind, and what she's learned about the difference between George Floyd the man and George Floyd the symbol.
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