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30 May 2020 and the summer after
South Bend's George Floyd protests are documented by the Tribune in a single day's reporting, and what the record shows is discipline on both sides of the line: On Saturday, 30 May 2020, five days after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, hundreds of demonstrators filled downtown South Bend in two waves — a noon march organized by Black Lives Matter South Bend from Jon R. Hunt Plaza in front of the Morris Performing Arts Center, and a second march at 6 p.m. — straying from their announced routes and culminating in a demonstration outside the South Bend Police Department. As of late that Saturday night, the Tribune reported, the marches "had remained peaceful, with no arrests, injuries or property damage." The names the marchers shouted were Floyd's, Breonna Taylor's, Ahmaud Arbery's — and Eric Logan's, the South Bend man killed by Officer Ryan O'Neill in June 2019, whose death had set off the city's own protests and reform fight the summer before (the Logan episode is carried in the City Controversies section). Mayor James Mueller issued a written statement; the South Bend Fraternal Order of Police issued its own, condemning Floyd's killing. The summer's one act of violence at a local demonstration belongs by the boundary rule to Mishawaka: on 5 July 2020 a car drove through a crowd at a Mishawaka protest, injuring one person, as the Tribune reported — Mishawaka's record, in Mishawaka's build. In South Bend itself, the documented 2020 story is the one the Tribune printed on the first night: hundreds in the streets, and nobody hurt.
Sources:
- South Bend Tribune, 30 May 2020, "South Bend protests: Two marches, hundreds of demonstrators and a call for change" — the two marches, their organizers and routes, the police-department culmination, the peaceful accounting as of late Saturday, the names invoked, and the Mueller and FOP statements.
- South Bend Tribune, 6 July 2020 (Marek Mazurek) — the car through the crowd at the Mishawaka protest of 5 July 2020, one injured; boundary-printed as Mishawaka's.
- The City Controversies section of this history — the Eric Logan episode of June 2019 and its protest summer, cross-referenced.