MINNEAPOLIS — It was a day of reflection, of remembrance, a time to lay flowers and say prayers, to celebrate Black culture with art and music and food, and to recall the life of a man whose death, one year ago, shook the country and forced it to confront its painful legacy of racism and police brutality.

In Minneapolis on Tuesday, as people gathered to mark the anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd, there was space for it all: the trauma and the grief; some celebration, over a murder conviction of a police officer; and a measure of hope, too, that in death Mr. Floyd, a Black man, had nudged America toward more racial equality.

Mr. Floyd’s death has “really highlighted for so many people in the country the problems of police brutality and the need to defend the humanity of Black and brown people,” said Debby Pope, a Chicago teacher who came on Tuesday to George Floyd Square, where Mr. Floyd was killed.

“Of course, it’s solemn because we are remembering a brutal murder,” she said. “But it’s also a cause for celebration because on the ashes of tragedy the community has built something really beautiful.”