The Congresswoman Pepper-Sprayed by Police

Joyce Beatty had never been pepper-sprayed before.

Growing up in Dayton during the 1960s, the 70-year-old Ohio congresswoman remembers having to use a different water fountain from the white people in her community, and having to swim in a different public pool. Throughout her life and political career, which began in the state legislature in the late ’90s, she’d taken part in many civil-rights demonstrations.

But the pepper spray was new to her. It “shuts you down,” she told me in an interview this morning. “It gets into your lungs. You’re coughing profusely. You can’t see.”

It happened yesterday afternoon, when Beatty joined a group of demonstrators in downtown Columbus protesting police violence following the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died Monday after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. In of the protest now circulating on Twitter, Beatty, with her gray hair, red mask, and hot-pink sweatshirt tied around her small waist, is easy to spot. Standing in front of a Pizza Rustica, she can be heard urging