Police Brutality: An Anthology [Paperback ed.] 0393321630, 9780393321630

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BRUTALITY ^ Hgpl

AN E

D IT

ED

ANTHOLOGY L L

N

E

L

S

AM 12: 53:

USA $24.95 CAN. $34.99

ISBN 0-393-04883-7

brutality

Police

one of America's

is

most serious domestic problems. This revelatory anthology of twelve original

both a landmark work of social protest and a prismatic search

essays

is

for answers.

In

recent years, nothing has blotted the American

imagination so starkly as the highway beating of

Rodney King, innocent

the shooting of the

Amadou

Abner Louima

Diallo,

in a

unarmed and

CO

and the savage torture of

Brooklyn precinct's Bathroom.

While many white Americans were shocked these naked abuses of official police power,

b\

man)

more black Americans greeted news of these

No

transgressions with an unfazed bewilderment.

one disputes the

fact that police brutality

immense problem,

yet never before has

an

is

been

it

properly examined and addressed.

With Police the best-selling

Brutality,

Jill

Nelson, author of

memoir Volunteer Slavery, has

neered a work of immense social importance. causes police brutality?

Why

about racism

America

What

has opposition to

grown so suddenly intense? What does

it

tell

it

us

at the turn

of the century?

The contributors

—academics,

fiction writers,

—

unique,

in

and professionals

offer

incisive,

CD

pio-

and

occasionally iconoclastic interpretations of police brutality.

York race

Nelson includes a description of a riot

a desperately

needed

context. Stanley political straw

New

of 1900, placing police brutality in historical

Crouch argues

man

and it

intellectual

as yet another

divisive of America's racial

consciousness. Claude Clegg

III

presents a brilliant

history of the FBI's sinister surveillance of the

(continued on back flap)

.^

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2012

http://archive.org/details/policebrutalityOOjill

POLICE BRUTALITY

An Anthology

Edited by

NELSON

W. W. Norton

& Company New York

•

London

AL BR HV8141 P567 2000 Copyright

© 2000 by

Jill

Nelson

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America Edition

First

"Another Day

American

at

the Front: Encounters with the Fuzz on the

Reed printed with the

Battlefront" by Ishmael

permission of the author.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this

& Company,

book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton

500

The

Avenue,

Fifth

text of this

New York, NY

book

with the display

is

composed

set in Mc-ta

Inc.,

101 10

in Berling

Normal.

Composition by Sue Carlson. Manufacturing by Haddon Craftsmen.

Book design by Chris Welch.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Police brutality

an anthology

:

/

edited by

Jill

Nelson.

cm.

p

Includes bibliographical referrru es

ISBN 0-393-04883-7 1.

— United enforcement — United

Police brutality

States. 2. Discrimination in States.

I.

Nelson,

Jill,

law

1952-

HV8141.P567 2000 00-020532

363.2'32—dc21

W. W. Norton & Company,

Inc.,

500

Fifth

Avenue,

New York,

NY

101 10

www.wwnorton.com

WW. Norton & Company, Ltd.,

10 Coptic Street, London,

1234567890

WC1 A

1PU

Contents

Introduction

PART 1

I.

9

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

"Slangin' Rocks

.

.

.

Palestinian Style" Dispatches from the Occupied

Zones of North America Robin 2

D. G.

Kelley

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen, York,

Police B ruta lity Portent of Disaster

Divergence Derrick Bell

4

Nation under Siege Elijah

Culture in Chicago

PART 5

II.

in

the City of

New

August 1900 Citizens' Protective League, Compiled by

Frank Moss (from the Collection of Elvin

3

21

60

and Discomforting

88

Muhammad,

Claude

Montgomery)

A.

Clegg

the FBI, III

and

Police-State

102

THE POLITICS OF POLICE BRUTALITY

"What Did

I

Do

to

Be So Black and Blue?"

Black Community Katheryn

K.

Police Violence

Russell

135

and

the

6 Obstacle Illusions The Cult of Racial Appearance

Patricia

7

From the Inside Looking Out Twenty-nine Years

PART

Department

IV.

Another Day

Under the

Point No.

at the Front

Veil of

New

York 171

Encounters with the Fuzz on the American

7:

189

Organizing Resistance and Struggling for

Suspicion

Richard Austin

We Want

Why I Joined

Flores Alexander Forbes The

Crisis of Police Brutality

and

the

Acknowledgments 265

the Black Panther Party

225

and Misconduct

Cure Ron Daniels

Biographical Notes 261

206

an Immediate End to Police Brutality and the

Murder of Black People

12

in the

eutenant Arth ur Doyle (Retired)

Li

Ishmael Reed

Liberation

11

157

REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE

Battlefront

10

Crouch

POLICING THE POLICE

III.

Police

9

149

What's New? The Truth, As Usual Stanley

PART 8

Williams

J.

240

in

America The Causes

POLICE BRUTALITY

Introduction Jill

Outrage.

Nelson

Disgust. Sadness. These

were the emotions

African Americans on February

Amadou

been shot

at forty-one times,

members of the New York

by most

they heard that

immigrant from Guinea, had

killed

with nineteen bullets by

Police Department's Street

Crime

Unit.

shocked by the magnitude of police firepower used to

Yet, while this

and

when

1999,

4,

Diallo, a twenty-two-year-old

felt

unarmed young man, we were not

communities of

color,

surprised. In a

kill

wide range of

being harassed, or brutalized, or even mur-

dered by the police has never been cause for surprise. Alarm,

yes,

but

not surprise.

We State

felt similar

emotions ten months

Supreme Court's Appellate

later

Division, an

when

all-

the

New

York

White panel of five

judges, responding to a defense motion,

moved

officers indicted for the Diallo shooting

from the Bronx to Albany,

New York's state

capital.

The justification? That

ble to find twelve impartial jurors in the

New

York City had

decided in what

would be

better to

ingly white

the

is,

trial in

county

move 1

the

trial

much

it

trial

would be impossi-

The

else in

appellate justices

too predictable way, that

to upstate Albany, an

50 miles removed from

New York,

the Bronx where the shooting took place.

surprise then to learn that

of the four

Bronx or anywhere

a jury trial taken place.

regrettably, a

the

Albany County

Americans and Latinos combined make up

is

a place

less

It

it

overwhelmthan to keep

was hardly

a

where African

than 14 percent of

Introduction

io

the population, an area where even fewer people of color

become

where roughly 100 percent of police

officers

potential jurors, and

who

go on

Nor did cers

who

against

trial

shot

them

germent

—

are acquitted.

come

it

when on February 25

as a surprise

Amadou

Diallo were each acqutted of

the four all

offi-

six charges

—from second-degree murder down to reckless endan-

after the jury deliberated for

found disappointment,

but not

yes,

many

scenario played out too

two and

We

a surprise.

times.

A

pro-

have seen

this

a half days.

The United

States attorney in

Manhattan, whose office has been monitoring the

and the Civil

case,

Rights Division of the Justice Department will review the case to

determine to

file

a

if

any

civil

civil rights

laws were violated. Diallo's parents plan

lawsuit against the

city,

and

possible,

is

it

though

could face administrative charges within

unlikely, that the officers

the deparment.

These were the emotions

Surprise. Shock. Disbelief.

White Americans when they learned of Amadou the police. Theirs confers not only

is

a

world of White privilege

power and opportunity but

innocence and the right to protection. police are,

if

It

is

in

presumption of

world

in

not exactly friends, certainly not enemies,

which, more often than not,

the players are

if

a

by most

murder by

which Whiteness

also a a

felt

Diallo's

which the a

world

in

Black person and a

policeman, the policeman will receive the benefit of the doubt. Standing on

a street

murder, having just

corner

come from

plan an organized response,

row

that

I

turned to the

I

Manhattan two days

in

a

meeting of concerned citizens to

was so

woman

after Diallo's

filled

beside

with frustration and sor-

me

waiting for the light to

change and asked "What do you think about the cops shooting that

man

forty-one times?"

She looked rage, pain,

and other "I

had

and

startled,

confused

fear that pulsed

cities across this

don't know.

I

—could

through the black veins of

this city

nation?

have to wait until

a reason," she finally

she not feel the palpable

responded.

all

the facts are

in.

I'm sure they

—

'

Introduction

ii

Perhaps she saw the disgust and disappointment on

my face.

mean, he

ping off the curb as the light turned green, she added,

"I

must have done something" She was gone before

tell

Amadou

I

could

Step-

her that

Diallo and thousands of others didn't do anything: his

crime was being Black and leaving his apartment building to go get

something to

eat.

And

of course there was no time to ask her exactly

what "something" any human being could

possibly do to warrant

being shot at forty-one times by officers hired, paid, and pledged to "serve

and protect." She could not understand that the

Amadou

Diallo's behavior

but the actions of the

pointed and hurt by her words, but

I

issue wasn't

police.

I

was disap-

was no more surprised by her

response than by Diallo's murder.

There

is

nothing

about brutality

new about

itself.

these responses to police brutality, or

The Kerner Commission on

appointed by President Lyndon

B.

Civil Disorders,

Johnson to look into the cause of

the urban rebellions of the 1960s, reported in 1968,

We have cited deep hostility between police

and ghetto communi-

ties as a

primary cause of the disorders surveyed by the Commis-

sion. In

Newark,

in Detroit, in Watts, in

Harlem

—

in practically

every city that has experienced racial disruption since the of 1964

summer

—abrasive relationships between police and Negroes and

other minority groups have been a major source of grievance, tension and, ultimately, disorder.

.

.

.

Police misconduct

—whether

described as brutality, harassment, verbal abuse, or discourtesy

cannot be tolerated even

if it is

to the risk of civil disorder. sibility

It is

infrequent.

It

contributes directly

inconsistent with the basic respon-

of a police force in a democracy. Police departments must

have rules prohibiting such misconduct and enforce them vigorously. Police field,

commanders must be aware of what

and take firm steps to correct abuses.

The Kerner Commission Report was not the tify

takes place in the

first

report to iden-

police misconduct as a key element of the fragile relationship

Introduction

12

between police and communities of color. Yet the problem

New

this

new

ers

were indicted on attempted-murder and

two

century. In the last year alone,

shooting three of four Black and Latino

men

persists in

Jersey state troop-

assault charges after

during

a traffic stop in

1998. This incident focused national attention on the practice of racial profiling

—stopping drivers

on the

solely

basis of their race

state police, a practice prevalent across the country.

New in

Jersey has admitted that racial profiling

is

—by

The governor of

commonplace.

2

Yet,

September 1999, Governor Gray Davis of California vetoed SB78,

a bill that

on

would have mandated stops.

all traffic

Los Angeles,

In

collection of racial

and ethnic data

3

former

a

member

of the Los Angeles Police

Department, convicted of stealing eight pounds of cocaine from

a

police evidence locker, told investigators that in 1996 he and a for-

mer partner

member

intentionally shot a gang

paralyzing him, and then planted a gun to

shooting was in self-defense. Since this case

came

first

scandal has implicated

at

make

point-blank range, it

appear that the

4

to light in

much

September 1999, the growing

LAPD,

of the

a force

long notorious for

abusive and excessive behavior in Black and Latino communities.

While no

officers

overturned by the the

police

tainted.

5

district attorney's office as

concede that

The

general have

the

have been indicted, forty criminal cases had been

FBI, the all

at

United States attorney, and the state attorney

begun criminal investigations

LAPD. Lawsuits

filed

New York

City,

into police brutality in

by those wrongly prosecuted

to cost Los Angeles in excess of In

of February 2000, and

ninety-nine others have been

least

$200

million.

where the conduct of the

ject of a federal investigation

by the

are expected

U.S. Civil

NYPD

was the sub-

Rights Commission

in

1999, settlements in claims and lawsuits alleging police brutality

reached a record $40 million that

fiscal

year alone.

The number of

complaints increased by 10 percent, to 2,324, the highest figure in a decade.

Yet

6

much

of America remains in denial about the magnitude of

police brutality, reflecting a historical pattern that continued through-

Introduction

13

out the twentieth century. Occasionally, case of Abner Louima, a Haitian

sodomized with

New

a sense of

mass outrage and leads to

officers are actually indicted, tried,

of circumstances.

judicial action appears to

The

They must not be involved police. Ideally

A.

and possibly

rarely occurs.

alas,

Such public outrage and cific set

a police officer, Justin

York, police precinct, the sheer violence

and horror of the crimes creates mass activism. Police

the Diallo case or the

American who was beaten and then

broken broom handle by

a

Volpe, in a Brooklyn,

convicted. This,

as in

in

must have

victims

demand

a spe-

a spotless record.

any altercation that might attract the

they should not drink or smoke and should be straight

and devout. The circumstances of their abuse and demise must be especially heinous. Disturbingly,

we seem more

able to respond to

victims who, while Black, are not African American. Yet even

when

these circumstances are in place, deaths at the hands of the police

unnoticed and unpunished.

will likely go largely

The notion of the "Black male the American consciousness that

predator"

we

of law enforcement.

The assumption

guys, the police are the

must have been

for

good

guys,

who

and

turnstile, or

being mentally

ill,

if

being a

men

that Black

if

are the

bad

the police killed someone

it

is

nurtured and manipulated by

getting a speeding ticket, or graffiti artist,

jumping

a

or smoking marijuana, or

or serving time in prison for any reason whatso-

somehow justified

As

an acceptable method

are quick to release the prior-arrest or medical

records of their victims, as

subway

is

as

good reason. They must have done something.

This attitude, ingrained since slavery, the police,

so historically rooted in

have come to accept the brutal-

and murder of citizens by the police

ization

ever,

is

a result, the

being killed by the police.

Black community

is

inured to police violence.

Abusive behavior on the part of the police has become commonplace;

we

are used to the small harassments. According to a

joint report

from the Bureau of

Institute of Justice, while

were most

likely to

Justice Statistics

and the National

men, Whites, and persons

in their

have face-to-face contact with the

panics and Blacks were about 70 percent

more

1997

twenties

police, His-

likely to

have con-

Introduction

14

tacts

with the police

were

hit,

by

estimated 500,000 people

held, pushed, choked, threatened with a flashlight, restrained

threatened or sprayed with chemical or pepper

a police dog,

spray,

threatened with

force.

Approximately 400,000 were

ties,

An

Whites were.

as

a gun, or

the police,

1

In short,

in

430

Men, minori-

also handcuffed.

and people under thirty represented

age of those handcuffed.

some other form of

subjected to

percent-

a relatively large

Of those who had

face-to-face contact with

alleged that the police threatened or used force.

abuse by the police

common

is

in Black, Latino,

and

other minority communities, and, as a result, the price of our outthe ante, has been insidiously upped.

rage,

fect or egregious victim to transform

As

for those

who

too need a more per-

our outrage into activism.

attract police attention

aberrant behavior, their brutalization

response

We

is

because of some sort of

treated as an appropriate

—the police go unpunished and the incident

is

gotten. Kevin Cedeno, shot in the back while holding a

quickly for-

machete and

running away from the police. Eleanor Bumpurs, an elderly, mentally ill

woman,

killed

for rent arrears.

by police who broke into her apartment to

Lewis Rivera,

a

shopping mall, was chased by

homeless

man

sitting

evict her

and eating

at least five police officers,

at a

sprayed

with pepper spray, kicked, thrown to the ground, bound hand and foot,

and dragged to

holding

a police car;

he died

less

than an hour later

cell.

Anthony Baez, who paid with

his life for the

hitting a police car with a football.

her broken-down car

Or

crime of accidentally

Tyisha Miller, unconscious in

at night at a gas station

with

a

gun on her

shot twelve times by cops a relative called to help her.

Busch, a mentally

ill

man

allegedly brandishing a

lap,

Or Gidone

high on marijuana, talking to himself and

hammer, shot by police twelve

times.

Or

ill

homeless

shot by a police officer after she allegedly lunged at

him with

Margaret Laverne Mitchell,

woman

in a

a fifty-five-year-old

mentally

Or Daniel Garcia Zarraga, shot and killed after police he lunged at them with that ubiquitous "shiny object." Or Yong

a screwdriver.

said

Xin Huang, police allege

sixteen, shot at close range

was

behind

a struggle over an air gun.

The

his left ear after list

what

of similar victims

Introduction

15

is

With the exception of

extensive.

Anthony Baez's

who was

attacker,

Police Officer Francis X. Livoti,

acquitted of criminally negligent

homicide but subsequently convicted of federal

and sentenced to seven and

civil rights violations

a half years in prison,

no police

officer

has been charged with any of these murders.

The majority of

—whether occasioned by

cases of police brutality

Black people driving on an interstate, or laughing with friends on a

subway or

street corner, or waiting for a

and walking to the store

—

bus, or simply being Black

go unpunished.

We

live in a

country in

which many Black and brown communities define themselves under

siege,

as

not only by poverty, miseducation, and crime but also by

we

the police. In need of protection,

are instead given an

army of

occupation.

Meanwhile, White Americans too often remain surprised, insisting that

exceptional. tions

what happened Most Whites

to

Abner Louima and Amadou

believe that

—good Blacks—and that there

is

Louima and

in the police

temic problem, just a few rotten apples

enormous

All Americans pay an

and extreme

attitudes. Police

at best

Diallo

is

Diallo are excep-

department no

who need to be thrown

sys-

out.

price as a result of these divergent

misconduct toward people of color

is

a

cornerstone of the perpetuation of racism and White privilege. Fear, indifference, paranoia, passivity, rage, alienation,

few of the by-products of or silent partners

of,

police.

in,

living in a society in

abusive, brutal,

Such behavior rends the

and

which we

racist

a

are victims

behavior by the

fabric of democracy, not only for the

immediate victims of police violence and their our neighborhoods, towns, and

and violence are

cities

and

families,

for the

whole

but for

all

of

nation.

According to a 1999 report from Amnesty International, United States of America: Race, Rights

.

.

.

the

and

Police Brutality,

the organization documented patterns of

USA,

ill

treatment across

including police beatings, unjustified shootings and the

use of dangerous restraint techniques to subdue suspects. While

only a minority of the in

the

USA

engage

many thousands

in deliberate

of law enforcement officers

and wanton brutality Amnesty

Introduction

16

International found that too

was being done to monitor and

little

check persistent abusers, or to ensure that police

common

situations

The

injury.

minimized the

risk

tactics in certain

of unnecessary force and

report also noted that widespread, systemic abuses had in

some

jurisdictions or police precincts.

evidence that

racial

and ethnic minorities were disproportionately

been found

highlighted

It

the victims of police misconduct, including false arrest and harass-

ment

as well as verbal

and physical abuse. 8

Given the existence of these intransigent lems,

that

felt

I

I

clear to

me

and

as a writer

more than respond

community

a

new

to each

incident as

and

racial

it

that the entire issue of police brutality has

cible that reflects

political ramifications of

in

become

initial

this sort of literary

manner,

I

I

felt

is

the

first

specifically

could

all

car,

or

make

all

Americans more aware all,

recogni-

step on the long road of transformation.

sought out

a

wide range of

from the academic community intention

a cru-

that by examining the issues in

of these divisive and deeply entrenched problems. After

I

grew

encounter

the privacy of one's house, in the street, in a

in a police station. Therefore,

tion

It

continued police

harassment and violence take us way beyond the

may occur

along.

both the continuing despair and the anger of the

community. Indeed, the

that

needed to do

activist

came

social prob-

as well as a

drawing voices

essayists,

broader community.

My

along has been not only to provide an opportunity for

Black Americans to speak out but also to present a great diversity of opinions. Accordingly, each of the essays in Police Brutality explores a differ-

ent aspect of the issue in an effort to understand

reached it.

this current situation

how America

— and how we extricate ourselves from

Essays examine the roots of the police presence in African Ameri-

can communities from the era of slavery until today,

ways

in

which race and crime

are

framed and

how

of crime justifies and perpetuates police brutality. year veteran of the

NYPD

offers a

as well as

the racialization

A

twenty-nine-

view of police misconduct from

the inside looking out while an urban planner and former ;

the

member

— Introduction

17

of the Black Panther Party details his politicization as a twelve-yearold boy after being kidnapped by the police.

A

historian places the

and Elijah Muhammad by the

surveillance of the Nation of Islam

and the Chicago police within the framework of police

FBI

brutality,

while an attorney examines the ways in which the legal system codifies

and encourages

A

it.

and constitutional

political

discusses both recent responses to police brutality

rights activist

and ways

in

which

the police force might be transformed.

Each of the

essays in Police Brutality brings critically

needed

light

to the subject of the banally abusive and often violent relationship

between the Black community and the police and the White community's ignorance

of,

indifference

or tacit sanctioning of police

to,

misconduct. Each makes clear the price are denied their constitutional rights.

As

indirectly, possible remedies.

makes

is,

Each essay

suggests, directly or

toward African Americans and

like slavery, part

and devastating to

systemic,

Americans pay when any

a whole, this collection of essays

clear that police brutality

other people of color real,

all

all

of the birth of this nation

of us.

In a booklet entitled Persecution of Negroes by Roughs

and

Police-

men, excerpts of which are included in this book, a fifteen-year-old

boy named Harry Reed

states in his affidavit,

African Americans victimized by

car.

boys were

five

When we

we saw

a

sitting

I

coming

me

mob

made

Of

seat of an

open Eighth Avenue

called out, "There's

a rush for the car,

and

some I

Avenue niggers;

jumped

out.

these four policemen three were standing on the

and one ran into the I

was running hard,

policeman hit

and police

ran up to the corner of 38th Street, where there were four

policemen. corner,

on the

got at the corner of 37th Street and Eighth

mob, and the

lynch them!" and they

Then

citizens

New York City,

officers in

We

one of many given by

mobs of White

in the street,

he

street to stop

as fast as

hit

me

twice over the head, and

coming, and

I

fell

down.

I

I

thought

I

When he saw me When reached this head with his club. He me.

could.

over the

I

saw the other three policemen if

I

fell

down

the others would

.

.

Introduction

18

me over the legs and on my my head, and they hit me in the

not attack me, but they did; they hit arm,

when

back. ... I

have

raised

I

wanted

I

told.

I

it

up

to protect

to get protection, but instead the cops hit me, as

did not resist arrest and

from the cops.

I

not even try to run away after

because

I

knew

Harry Reed's

changed

did not struggle to get away

if

I

affidavit

I

had been

would

did they

hit

me

hit.

I

was

did

afraid to run,

again.

dated August 22, 1900.

is

I

And

has

little

in a century.

The hope decessors,

is

that Police Brutality will not suffer the fate of

become another

change the way

its

pre-

report to be read, clucked over, and put

aside to gather dust. Rather,

of us to

I

only wanted to get away from the mob. ...

it

we

should be read

as a challenge to

each

think about the issue and an inspiration

for each of us to take action.

Now

that

would be something]

Notes 1

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Ciinl Disorders

(New

York:

E.P. Dutton, 1968), 299, 305. 2.

New

York Times, September

8,

1999,

sec. B, p.

3. Ibid.,

September 30, 1999,

sec.

4. Ibid.,

September 26, 1999,

sec. 1, p. 32.

5. Ibid.,

February 24, 2000,

6. Ibid.,

October

7.

1,

Bureau of Justice

1999,

Amnesty

Brutality

A,

p.

p.

1

1

20.

2.

sec. B, p. 1.

Statistics

of Force: Collection of National 8.

sec.

A,

and the National

Institute of Justice, Police

Data (Washington, D.C., 1997),

4.

International, United States of America: Race, Rights

(New York: Amnesty

9. Persecution of

International

USA,

1999),

and

Police

New

York,

1.

Negroes by Roughs and Policemen, in the City of

August, 1900, 73-74.

Use

Parti

HISTORICAL

"Slangin' Rocks

.

Palestinian Style"

.

.

Dispatches from the Occupied Zones of North America Robin

The only way

Kelley

D. G.

to police a ghetto

is

to

be oppressive.

.

.

.

They

rep-

resent the force of the white world, and that world's criminal

man

up

profit

and

ease, to

place.

The

badge, the gun in the holster, and the swinging club

make

vivid

what

.

.

.

He moves

keep the Black

will

happen should

is,

his rebellion

through Harlem, therefore,

which

dier in a bitterly hostile country,

where he

corralled

and

is

like is

here, in his

become

overt.

an occupying

precisely what,

sol-

and

the reason he walks in twos and threes.

—James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (1962) You

can't trust a big grip

And

and

a smile

slang rocks Palestinian style

I

—The Coup, "The Shipment," Steal This

Memorandum: The

Great. into

The 9:07 bus hasn't

a

sprint,

wheezing, books case.

The night

Album (Polemic/Dogday 1998)

Accidental Ethnographer

left yet.

Three long blocks

hearing only the sound of my

cool

and

quiet

and 21

break

own footsteps, asthmatic

and papers knocking around my is

to go. I

very dark.

oversized legal brief-

No

crickets or porch

Robin

22

dwellers or porch habit.

the

Two more

lights,

blocks to go. Suddenly the

rhythm of my

Wind.

and

feet

My

Lights.

shadow extending down not for me,

thought.

I

dog chained

just a big

Not

An

breath.

round Sound" demonstration noise.

D. G. Kelley

a

to

tree,

sound of helicopters

invasion so swift

a high-tech movie

in

barking out of

the block, almost to

my

like

it is

a "Sur-

Deafening

theater.

silhouette appears before me,

interrupts

a lengthening

destination. All this

is

me.

"Drop the package and put your hands on top of your head, enclosing

your

Don't turn around!" The voice

fingers!

But

speaker, probably a patrol car. briefcase

all I have, so I set

is

down

it

see.

What

carefully

and

comply.

"Walk backward and do not turn around around!" bright in

My

and

shadow

long

hot like the sun.

a sea of light. Step Crack!

A

On

now obscured

walk back,

I

.

.

to restrain

repeat,

do not turn lights. It feels

I

me.

Moment of silence.

my arms

What

did

I

lay

I'll

still

What

do?

I

my silence. Why

head and

left

A

crime.

flashlight shined directly into

did you stop me?

What did I do?

cannot see who said

I

ringlets,

to

my

slamming, engines

most

likely

this; I see

produced by

the flashlight pointed directly into

my

eyes.

run: the last bus from Bellflower

ask for badge numbers, but their

loot.

my

to

without me.

idling patrol cars

looking for

is

walkie-talkies, car doors

no longer had a reason

Long Beach

damp pavement my back, a man's

under the heavy weight of this uniformed

and shadows and floating red

the blow to the Besides, I

One blow

use this nightstick for real."

"You ran, nigger! Criminals run." only lights

head.

.

down on my fingers and

searing with pain.

eyes. Footsteps, live voices,

purring. I break

Drowning

I protest.

said shut the fuck up or

man,

bat.

a

the ground, face crushed against the

"Shut the fuck up!" "I

My

package?

a flood of

wet from yesterday's rain, arms twisted behind

knee

I

in

1

slowly, blind as

one, two, three, four.

nightstick crashes

is all it takes. still

is

coming through a loud-

is

cannot

I

and

radios, I

lips

hear them

are sealed. rifling

Books and papers yield nothing of

gun, no contraband. So they

dump

the contents in

Over

the din of

my

"package"

through

interest,

no smoking

a shallow pothole half

Slangin' Rocks

with

filled

muddy

No

my

more words. Lights

Palestinian Style

off.

23

wet from the moistened pave-

is

and forehead, from

uncontrollable

Doors slam. Cars drive

off in different

neck

heavy wheezing punctuated by dry coughs. Then

some

English;

kindness, the

I

.

hear now, besides a lone helicopter fading in the distance,

directions. All I is

.

My face

rainwater.

ment, from sweat forming on tears.

.

some fearful, some

unknown

WILL NEVER forget that

iff's

some Spanish, With

angry. Eyewitness to public terror.

my

bystanders collect

mud, putting pieces back

voices,

papers and books, wiping

off

together.

autumn night

Department was known

in 1981.

The Lakewood and Latino

for harassing Black

leaving the scene without a trace.

And

in 1981, police

Sher-

men and

departments

throughout the Greater Long Beach area were feeling pressure from

community

activists for

can student

at

found dead

the death of

Ron

Settles,

Cal State Long Beach and star football player

the middle of Long Beach.

He was

—

use.

of a mystery, but the

Police

Department went something

official story

and then hanged himself in efforts to file a I

Johannesburg

high on drugs and pos-

his cell.

complaint with the Lakewood Sheriff

had no badge numbers and was told that the I

might

where the color

line

in

have been

in Paris,

West Indians

in

any ex-

keeps the world's darker

people under an omnipotent heel. Whether

North Africans

as well

in the days of apartheid or, for that matter,

colonial metropole

isn't

obtained a blunt object, beat

department had no record of the incident. in

next really

he

presented by the Signal Hill

like this:

sibly distraught, Settles mysteriously

failed miserably.

but they arrested him for

What happened

much

in

offi-

a strange charge in light of the fact that

had no prior history of drug

My own

town smack dab

stopped by Signal Hill police

cers allegedly for a routine traffic violation,

possession of cocaine

who was

had been arrested the night

in a holding cell. Settles

before while driving through Signal Hill, a tiny

himself,

an African Ameri-

we

are speaking of

London, indigenous peoples

Sydney, Australia, Black people in Birmingham (Alabama or Eng-

land), or Palestinians in the

West Bank,

relations

between the police

24

Robin

and people of color have been encounter. Some might balk

at

D. G. Kelley

historically rooted in

colonial

a

the Coup's lyrical analogy between

African American youths' confrontations with the police and the street battles of Palestinians against Israeli authority, it

but

in

my

view

speaks directly to the historical foundations of police brutality in

who may

America. The clever pun ("slangin' rocks," for those

know,

means

also

not

to sell crack cocaine) not only provides a broader,

between

international political context for violent confrontations

police and people of color, but raises the specter of transformation, of

the powerless turning the weapons of self-destruction into weapons for social change.

The Coup

represents a long line of hip-hop groups that draw on

metaphors of war to describe inner-city communities and

between police and

residents. For at least a

decade and

relations

a half, begin-

ning perhaps with Toddy Tee's 1985 street tape "Batteram," to songs

such

as

Ice-T's

"The

Killing

Machine," 2 Black, 2 Strong

Fields,"

Public Enemy's 'Anti-Nigga

MMG's "War on Drugs" and "Ice Man Me from You," Ice Cube's from the Darkside)," WC. and the

Cometh," KRS-One's "Who Will Protect "Endangered Species (Tales

MAAD "They

Circle's

"Behind Closed Doors," Compton's Most Wanted's

Gafflin,"

Still

Cypress

Hill's "Pigs,"

and Kid

Frost's

"I

Got

Pulled Over," rappers have been painting vivid portraits of the ghetto as a

war zone and the police

artists

are not alone.

as

an occupying army. These young

The mainstream media have

also

employed

metaphors of war and occupation to describe America's inner

The

recasting of poor urban Black

brought to us on Hours:

On Gang

Hood, and

a

NBC Nightly News, Street,"

Hollywood

communities

Dan

films like Colors

and Boyz

N the

massive media blitz that has been indispensable in creat1

position of the police as an occupying

inner cities

war zones was

Rather's special report "48

ing and criminalizing the so-called underclass.

The

as

cities.

is

not a

new phenomenon.

It is

army

in

America's

not a recent manifestation

of a postindustrial condition in which the disappearance of jobs in

urban areas generated lawlessness and disorder, nor

is it

the result of

the federal government having declared war on drugs, though these

SlangiiV Rocks

things

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

25

have certainly heightened police-community tensions

urban neighborhoods of tionship,

we need

To understand the roots of

color.

to go back

.

.

.

way back

in

this rela-

to the days of slavery and

colonial rule.

Dispatches from the Grave: State Violence

in

the Context of Slavery and Empire

Run,

nigger,

run

De Patteroll get you Run,

De

nigger, run,

Patteroll get

Watch,

De

1 .

nigger,

you

1 .

watch,

you

Patteroll trick

1

Watch, nigger watch,

He got a

big gun 1 .

—"Run, Nigger, Run" The

policing of Black, Latino, and Native

the United States

and

pacification.

in cities at the

on

"legal"

initially

(slave song, n.d.)

American communities

in

took the form of occupation, surveillance,

Even before formal police

forces

were established

end of the nineteenth century, people

and extralegal violence and terrorism to

and exploit communities of

color.

We

in

power

relied

pacify, discipline,

might point to the colonial

wars against the indigenous populations from the time of European settlement

up

to the

end of the nineteenth century. These wars of

"pacification" resulted in forced marches, land seizures, the contain-

ment of whole

societies within reservations, genocide,

and the occu-

pation and annexation of northern Mexico. In the antebellum South,

the

work of "policing" was geared almost

entirely to the

maintenance

of slavery. "Patrollers," or individuals employed for the purposes of tracking

down

fugitive slaves,

were the most

visible manifestation of

an active police force throughout the South, and virtually any adult

White male could be conscripted

to help put

down

a slave revolt.

— 26

The kind of

Robin

violent, draconian

D. G. Kelley

punishment we now

associate with

brutality

and excess was not only part of the culture but codified

law. For

example,

a Virginia

in

law of 1705 allowed slaveholders to

burn, whip, dismember, or mutilate slaves as punishment for crimes,

and

a

1723 Maryland law provided

slave or free

was

—who

ratified in

federal

armed

struck a

1787,

it

for cutting off ears of Africans

White person.

guaranteed,

among

the Civil

the Constitution

other things, the use of

down any slave insurrections, Law of 1793.

forces to put

a

promise

:

reinforced by the Fugitive Slave

Once

When

War brought

an end to chattel slavery, most

African Americans expected the state to protect them, to provide a safe

environment so that they could get on with the work of rebuild-

ing their lives as free citizens.

And

at

times Union troops, whose

ranks included Black people, actually defended and protected the

newly freed people. But before the momentary Reconstruction, southern Blacks extralegal violence

felt

of Radical

rise

the heel of state repression and

once President Andrew Johnson was

in office, in

1865, and decided to practically hand the South back to the ex-Confederates. In

1866, around the same time the federal government

opted to disarm Black militiamen and repression swept the South.

such

as

The

Ku Klux Klan and

the

which burned Black homes,

their "place."

wave of

terror

and

planter class formed terrorist groups

the Knights of the

White Camellia,

and crops and intimidated,

businesses,

Americans who they believed did not

beat, even lynched African

know

soldiers, a

The ex-Confederate-dominated

provisional gov-

ernments not only looked the other way but contributed directly to the overall atmosphere of terror and subordination by passing "Black codes," a series of laws that sharply restricted landownership, the right to purchase firearms,

work

in

independent

freedom of movement, and the

trades,

among

right to

other things. Indeed, the codes

included various "apprenticeship laws," which bound "unattached" ex-slave children and teenagers to their plantation. "Apprenticeship"

was nothing tions saved

less

many

than a return to slavery; only mass informal adopof these young people.

3

Slangin' Rocks

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

During the era of the Black codes ing the

as

27

well as in the period follow-

end of Reconstruction and the consolidation of White supre-

macy, informal modes of terrorism and violence became the most pervasive form

of policing and disciplining African Americans.

Although several

cities

and counties established formal police forces

during the late nineteenth century/ this was nevertheless the era of

lynch law. Lynching, a practice that also occurred throughout the colonial

world

American

as

—from

apple

Jim Crow to the

Southwest Africa to the Philippines

pie.

rest of the world.

form of popular

as a

employed primarily

—was

as

Indeed, the United States was busy exporting

justice,

Often described by

its

defenders

lynching in the United States was

against African Americans.

Between 1882 and

1946, there were at least five thousand recorded lynchings in this country.

Much more

appoints

itself judge, jury,

mob

than a mob-style hanging in which the

and executioner, lynching was

a

form of

public torture often involving the severing of limbs and mutilation of genitalia.

Sometimes

a lynching

families (children included),

might draw

crowd of White

a large

and the victim's body parts might be

sold or distributed to spectators. Lynching

was not

a substitute for

the day-to-day policing of a subordinate group; rather, spectacle intended to terrorize entire communities. lated

body hanging from

a tree served

as

a

it

was

a public

A charred,

muti-

and potent

visible

reminder of the price of stepping out of line. 5 Lynching

is

essential for understanding the history

and character

of police violence in the America of the twenty-first century precisely

because

it

reveals the sexual

and gendered dimensions of main-

taining the color line and disciplining Black bodies/

1

Even though

only about one-fourth of the lynchings from 1880 to 1930 were

prompted by accusations of rape, and though lynch victims were political

and

women deemed

sensational

activists,

a significant

labor organizers, or Black

"insolent" or "uppity"

a

men

toward Whites, the most Black

man

genital mutilation.

(The

and highly publicized lynchings involved

accused of raping

number of

White woman: hence the

a

sexual undertone of racist violence, rooted in slavery and lynching,

28

continues to this day

Robin

— manifest most recently New York

and rape of Abner Louima by than anything

D. G. Kelley

More

City police officers.)

lynching was a means of protecting the purity of

else,

White womanhood from Black male versally held that

in the brutal beating

This position was so uni-

rapists.

even Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, considered the

first

professor of anthropology in the United States and once president of

the American Association for the Advancement of Science, implicitly

defended lynching

It

and

women

alone of the highest race that

serve the purity of the type, and with

They have no more

the highest. sion,

than that of transmitting

endowment gained by tions of struggle.

.

.

.

of

colored man.

Black

holier duty,

in its integrity

a

white

is false,

woman

were Black

that religion

is

rot-

enduring the embrace

women who

myth of the

things, that

endured the

most

assaults

for which they were never punished, and explained

these myths affected the lives of

of the color

no more sacred misthe heritage of ethnic

time, Ida B. Wells and others exposed the

interracial rape victims

men

look to pre-

the claims of the race to be

They demonstrated, among other

rapist.

of White

we must

it is

the race throughout thousands of genera-

which would sanction

At the same

it

That philanthropy

ten, a

racial

Peoples (1890), he wrote,

cannot be too often repeated, too emphatically urged, that

to the

how

White women and

as a last resort to protect

bloodlines. In his Races

line.

As the

men and women on

historian Jacquelyn

Dowd

both sides

Hall points out,

myth of the Black rapist allowed southern White males demand subordination and deference from White women

the

exchange for their "protection." This

A White woman

desiring a

so any such encounter

distinct contrast,

non-White man was out of the question, rape.

8

between White men and Black women,

in

were presumed to be not only consensual but even

by the woman. The

dialectic also

in

the real meaning of chivalry.

was presumed to be

All sexual encounters

initiated

is

to

virginal

White woman and Black

rapist

produced the myth of the promiscuous Black woman.

Slangin' Rocks

Black

women

deemed

in

such

.

.

.

world could not be raped, because they were

a

natural-born prostitutes.

And

New

the

Black

woman was

came

to her defense; she

York race

woman was

a

known

restaurant or a club, she

what was

women. Often

prostitute or not;

was

be

likely to

and

it

when a man

a Black

sundown law"

did not matter whether

if

she was by herself in a

arrested.

9

Although most accounts characterize lynching because

in

for her husband.

called "a

it

engaged

of 1900 began

riot

had merely been waiting

In Atlanta, the police enforced

the

women were

falsely arrested for solicitation

directed primarily at Black

which police

a situation in

assumed that unescorted Black

solicitation. In fact,

they too had to

as prostitutes,

be policed. The lynch mentality created officers

29

Palestinian Style

as

"extralegal,"

takes place outside of the criminal justice system,

we must

acknowledge the complicity of both the police and the law upholding and this period,

facilitating

lynching in the South.

failed.

Second, not only have police officers and deputies

openly participated in lynchings, but

enforcement

By the turn of the

was not uncommon

century,

it

seemed

—one almost

Cuba and the

the Spanish-American

War

both theaters noted the

as if the nation

as violent as

law

Philippines,

was embroiled

America's imperial-

which became known

as

of 1898. Indeed, a few Black troops in

between

similarities

racial violence in

and the treatment of America's new colonial

States

for

10

domestic race war

expeditions in

it

Black prisoner into the waiting

officials to release a

arms of a lynch mob.

ist

in

throughout

every effort to persuade Congress to pass a federal anti-

lynching law

in a

First,

subjects.

the

One

Black soldier in the Philippines expressed his utter contempt for the

way Whites "began curse

them

on the

as

to apply

damned

home

from and

niggers, steal

street of their small

change

.

treatment for colored peoples:

.

.

ravish

them, rob them

kick the poor unfortunate

if

he

complained, desecrate their church property, and after fighting began, looted everything in sight, burning, robbing the graves."

11

Black communities during this period had to deal not only with steady stream of lynchings (in February

one

a day!)

but with

a

1

893

alone, there

a

was nearly

constant threat of invasion by armed, murder-

30

Robin

D. G. Kelley

ous White mobs. In the years from 1898 to 1908, "race out in Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, City,

New

riots"

Orleans,

broke

New York

Phoenix, South Carolina, Akron, Ohio, Washington Parish,

Louisiana, Birmingham, Alabama, Brownsville, Texas, and Springfield, Illinois,

ied,

to

name but

a few.

The

catalysts for these atrocities var-

ranging from revenge to punishment for

were no viable

a

crime for which there

suspects, competition over jobs, suppression of Black

voting rights, an assertive gesture by an "insolent" Black person. In

most

cases, local police officers either

stood by as these pogroms

unfolded or actively participated on the side of White supremacists. 12

With the outbreak of World War found themselves fighting on two

I,

African Americans once again

fronts.

While 400,000 Black men

geared up to defend American democracy in Europe, tens of thou-

home found themselves having to defend their lives, often the very men hired to protect and serve. The summer of 1917

sands back against

turned out to be particularly bloody. In East

and

local militia joined

White mobs

St. Louis, Illinois,

in their attack

munity. Racial tensions were at an all-time high

police

on the Black comin this river

town,

who

exacerbated by the rising number of Black southern migrants,

competed with Whites

for jobs.

As

a result

ary headlines in the local paper called

Louis a Lily White Town." 1917, gangs of White

men

And

of these tensions, incendi-

on readers to "Make East

try they did.

On

the night of July

police

committee investigating the

"became part of the

shooting

down

1,

drove through the Black community and

began shooting into homes indiscriminately. According to a special congressional

St.

mob by

a report

riot,

by

the local

countenancing the assaulting and

of defenseless negroes and adding to the terrifying

scenes of rapine and slaughter."

When

the smoke cleared, at least 150

Black residents had been shot, burned, hanged, or

maimed

for

life,

and about 6,000 were driven from their homes. Thirty-nine Black people

lost their lives, including small children

crushed or

who were

tossed into bonfires.

During that same summer, "war" a city

with

also

whose

skulls

were

13

broke out

in

Houston, Texas,

a reputation for police brutality in a state that led the

Slangin' Rocks

nation in lynching

statistics.

.

.

Palestinian Style

.

Just a year after the

of seventeen-year-old Jesse Washington in

ment dispatched the Infantry to guard

31

gruesome lynching

Waco

War Depart-

the

;

all-Black Third Battalion of the Twenty-fourth

Camp Logan which was ;

The presence of Black

under construction.

still

military personnel intensified an already tense

atmosphere. As the historian Herbert Shapiro observed in his

racial

book Black

and White

Violence

Response, "The hostility of racist

Houston to the black servicemen was made troops arrived in the area.

White policemen

Crow

black soldiers for refusing to obey Jim

two of the new

early in August, beat

on August 23, two Houston police soldier, Private

woman

Edwards,

arrivals

clear as

a streetcar."

for the other

14

and arrested

Then,

a

Black

to the defense of a Black

When

Charles Baltimore approached the officers about the

much

the

City detectives,

signs.

on

they had physically and verbally abused.

was beaten and shot

as

assaulted and arrested

officers beat

who had come

soon

Corporal

arrest,

he too

being arrested. This was too

at before finally

members of the Third

Battalion to bear. "To hell

with going to France," shouted one of the enlisted men, "get to work right here."

seized

And they

did.

erupted between the

was

over, sixteen

dead.

life

into

town

soldiers, police,

to take revenge.

and armed

averted, but the U.S.

civilians;

when

fifty

swiftly

were sentenced

15

Those Black men who did get to Europe to "make the world for

democracy" returned

and more police

Elaine, Arkansas,

home

brutality. In

mer" of 1919, race

riots

to segregation, lynching, race

what became known

erupted

in

as

safe

riots,

the "Red sum-

Chicago, Washington, D.C.,

Longview, Texas, Omaha, Nebraska, and Knoxville,

Tennessee. Lynchings took place almost

twenty-two people were lynched that returning veterans.

Age,

it

soldiers lay

government acted

men: nineteen were executed and

imprisonment.

soldiers

A shoot-out

Whites (four policemen) and four Black

A lynching was

to punish the to

Approximately one hundred Black

weapons and marched

The

following decade,

may be remembered by

daily.

year,

In

Georgia alone,

most of

known

to

whom

some

as

were

the Jazz

others less nostalgically as the era of the

Robin

32

Ku Klux

Klan.

No

D. G. Kelley

longer limited to the South, the Klan developed

strongholds in the West and the Midwest, notably in the state of Indiana.

And

in the cities police violence rose steadily; according to

one study conducted by the sociologist Arthur Raper, during the 1920s approximately half of

all

Black people

of Whites were murdered by the police.

1

who

died at the hands

^

Toward the end of the 1930s, the problem of

became more apparent

as

police violence

lynching began to decline. Despite Presi-

dent Franklin D. Roosevelt's refusal to sign an antilynching eral factors

such

as

contributed to lynching's slow demise.

the Association of Southern

Lynching, the

NAACP, and

Women

First,

bill,

sev-

organizations

for the Prevention of

the Communist-led International Labor

Defense waged campaigns that generated worldwide opposition to lynching. Second, southern elites embarrassed by the negative publicity

and interested

in attracting

aged lynching. In some local police forces

release

mean cities

them

to a

cases,

northern capital, quietly discour-

southern governors began insisting that

keep Black suspects

in their

mob. However, the decline

the abandonment of the sexual color

such

as

New York

and Chicago, where

custody rather than in

line.

lynching did not

Even

in

northern

interracial couples

could

exist relatively openly, police officers frequently harassed Black

escorting

White women.

men

17

Dispatches from the

Home

Exchanging White Sheets

for

Front:

Rap Sheets

These new pressures did not make the police any more conscientious.

On

the contrary, the decline in lynching coincided with the

expansion of urban police forces and a

rise in

reported incidents of

police brutality. In Harlem, for example, the accumulation of police

abuses over the years eventually exploded into a massive riot in 1935.

The

incident that touched off the uprising was a

rumor

that

fourteen-year-old Lino Rivera had been killed by police after he was

Slangin' Rocks

arrested for shoplifting.

but

didn't matter.

it

dered so

many

police abuses

It

The

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

33

turned out that he was very

NYPD

had

much

alive,

and mur-

terrorized, harassed,

Black Harlem residents that the collective anger over

had reached

sion appointed

by Mayor

a boiling point. Indeed, a special

Fiorello

commis-

La Guardia to investigate the

more

causes of the riot noted that "nothing revealed

strikingly the

deep-seated resentments of the citizens of Harlem against exploitation

and

racial discrimination

than their attitude toward the police."

Harlemites overwhelmed the commission with testimony of the daily abuses they endured, compelling commissioners to

the Police Department makes no

entire department:

"inasmuch

effort to discipline

policemen guilty of these offenses

Department

Police

The

situation

as a

as

grew worse during World War

First,

reluctant to support the filled

fight

on two

many

fronts:

rhetoric, daily confrontations

intolerant

cans at

Whites took on

became

home and

a

I.

like

charges."

18

police not

migrants, but

more

defiant initially

This time around, they

abroad.

Amid

antifascist

with the police, segregation laws, or

political significance.

by the war, "Double

cry heard

for the

As African AmeriV," victory

from Black communities.

Advancement of Colored People

for example, enjoyed a tenfold increase in

while groups draft)

War

home and

became the

The National Association

(NAACP),

Urban

then the

.

African Americans were

increasingly politicized

abroad,

.

war because they could not forget the unful-

promises generated by World

would

II.

number of

—especially the youth— adopted

posture than usual.

.

whole must accept the onus of these

only had to contend with an increased

African Americans

condemn the

the Nation of Islam (whose

membership,

members

resisted the

suddenly became a force to be reckoned with. The period also

saw the creation of new organizations, such Equality

Not

(CORE), which came

surprisingly,

as

the Congress on Racial

into being during the war.

police repression

became

a

19

major issue for

African Americans. In Birmingham beginning in 1941,

a

wave of

police homicides and beatings reignited resistance to police brutality. In

one incident, O'Dee Henderson,

who was

arrested and jailed for

Robin

34

merely arguing with

White man, was found the next morning

handcuffed and

jail cell

a

a

D. G. Kelley

fatally shot.

A few weeks

later,

in his

John Jackson,

Black metal worker in his early twenties, was shot to death as he lay

in

the back seat of a police

car.

made

Jackson

the fatal mistake of

arguing with the arresting officers in front of a crowd of Blacks lined

up outside

a

movie

theater.

:

"

Reminiscent of those of the

First

World

War, confrontations between Black residents and White policemen occasionally sparked full-scale

when

1943,

During the "Red summer" of

The Harlem

riot

pened eight years

of 1943 was almost

and yet

earlier,

like

woman, Marjorie

Polite.

Harlem's Hotel Braddock for

when

hotel employees.

officer's actions, a scuffle

New York, lit

the

began when

it

a

to the defense of a

police had been staking out

illegal activities,

When Bandy

including solicitation, Polite after an argu-

stepped

Harlem roared

come home: 6 people

the war had

in to protest

like a bonfire.

lay dead,

the

When word It

looked

550 had been

and 1,450 stores had been damaged or burned to the

arrested,

In

came

riot

ensued and Collins shot him.

of the shooting hit the streets,

ground.

cities, in

repeat of what had hap-

900

1

policeman named James Collins arrested

a

ment with

as if

The

a

the

Black man, army private Robert Bandy,

Black

dozen

and Los Angeles police violence was the match that

Detroit, fuse.

riots.

race riots erupted in almost a

21

Harlem, Mayor La Guardia called on the police to exercise

and compared with the police

restraint,

they seemed

behaved colors

much more

like partisans in a race war.

one year

earlier,

in

the 1935 conflagration,

compliant. In Detroit, however, the police

They had

when policemen

already

joined White

shown

mobs

their

in pre-

venting Black tenants from moving into the Sojourner Truth Housing Project.

During the

nities relatively

riots,

White mobs moved through Black commu-

unmolested, while African Americans were being

arrested and shot at left and right. All seventeen people killed

police

by

were Black. The police refused to use force to stop White

assailants,

and

at

one point they besieged an apartment building

African American

community

in search of a suspect

who had

in

an

shot a

Slangin' Rocks

police officer.

The

officers

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

35

surrounded the building, fired indiscrimiin several tear gas canisters.

They

then ransacked individual apartments and, according to some

resi-

nately into the windows,

money and personal property. Thurgood Marshall, the who reported on police abuses during the riot, said

dents, stole

NAACP

and tossed

counsel

the apartment building "resembled part of a battlefield." In an editorial

about the Detroit

tis

spoke for

many

What were

riots,

the Pittsburgh Courier columnist

Black observers

when he

L. Prat-

P.

wrote,

when Negroes were being beaten in What were the police doing when streetcars were stopped by the mob and Negroes mobbed and beaten? They were arresting Negroes. What were the police doing when automobiles bearing Negroes were stopped, turned the Negro

the police doing

district? Arresting

Negroes.

over and demolished and their occupants beaten? They were arresting Negroes.

nity

is

It is

crystal clear that in

no American commu-

the police power going to be used against the majority from

which the

mob comes to

protect the minority from which the vic-

In Los Angeles during that fateful

summer

cano males became primary targets of

These "zoot

repression.

between

a

suit

riots"

and police

revealed underlying tensions

growing number of young "pachucos," on the one hand,

and White servicemen and police

These young people exhibited

officers in the city,

a cool,

on the

toward Whites

Tensions between the zoot suiters and servicemen

head

in

amounted

lence,

to a ritualized stripping of the zoot.

The

it

was over

six

hundred Chicanos ended up

the assailants essentially got a slap on the wrists. their behavior, explaining that they

were

in

to a

what

police chose sides

although the zoot suiters were victims of white

when

in gen-

came

June 1943, during which White soldiers engaged

carefully;

other.

measured indifference to the

war, as well as an increasingly defiant posture eral.

of 1943, young Chi-

racial violence

The

racial vio-

in jail

and

police excused

"letting off steam."

But

Robin

36

D. G. Kelley

More

these so-called riots were just the beginning. in the

wake of the Sleepy Lagoon

case, in

violence followed

which police arrested some

three hundred Chicano youths after Jose Diaz was found dead near

the Sleepy Lagoon, a water reservoir in East Los Angeles. Twenty-

two of the youths went

to

trial,

and seventeen were convicted of

crimes ranging from first-degree murder to assault, despite the lack of evidence. There were no eyewitnesses and no evidence that Diaz had, in fact, been murdered.

had gotten drunk,

What

fallen asleep

evidence did exist suggests that he

on the road, and been

by

hit

a car.

Nevertheless, amid mass anti-Mexican sentiment and pressure to dis-

mantle street gangs, these young years

later,

sent to San Quentin.

Two

however, the U.S. District Court of Appeals overturned

their convictions, In

men were

acknowledging that they had been railroaded. 23

both the Sleepy Lagoon

trials

and the zoot

suit riots, the

media

contributed to the demonization of Chicano youth by portraying

them

as bloodthirsty, violent thugs.

While

gangs roamed the streets of Los Angeles

at

numbers of White

large

the time, the press treated

the gang issue as strictly a Mexican and a Black problem. After the war, police repression against

Chicanos only

intensified, especially

once the High Court overturned the Sleepy Lagoon convictions. Christmas day

1951, for example,

in

a

group of police

removed seven young Chicanos from the Lincoln Heights beat

them

ruthlessly.

fifteen-year-old

years

later,

two

LA

jail

and

sheriffs severely beat

David Hidalgo while other deputies looked on. As

the officers thrashed

was beg

Two

On

officers

for mercy.

him within an inch of

his

life, all

he could do

24

Dispatches from the

Killing Fields of

North America:

Notes on Urban Insurrection and Right-Wing Reaction

"Law and order" became

a

coded

battle cry as the police

were

transformed into an army defending white power and the status quo.

— Frank Donner, Protectors of

Privilege

(1990)

Slangin' Rocks

It is

.

Palestinian Style

.

37

astounding that, at least at the outset, the modern Civil Rights

movement

A

.

up

did not take

police brutality as one of its top priorities.

study conducted by the Department of Justice found that in the

eighteen-month period from January 1958 to June 1960, some 34 percent of

all

reported victims of police brutality were Black. 25

And

given the general fear of police retaliation, especially in the South, is

likely that the

much

percentage was actually

Not

higher.

Rights activists ignored police brutality cases: the

that Civil

of the

files

it

NAACP back

are overflowing with complaints about police abuses that date

to the organization's founding. However, despite hours of dramatic

footage of southern cops beating

down

Civil Rights

long and public history of police repression in

marchers and

cities

such

as

a

Mem-

Birmingham, Atlanta, and Columbia (Tennessee and South

phis,

Carolina),

the

movement focused most

desegregation of public Class and ideology

facilities

may

of

and on voter

partly explain

its

energies

registration.

why

on the

26

police brutality took a

back seat to desegregation. Although middle-class African Americans

were never immune from police abuse, incidents of brutality and harassment disproportionately affected the urban poor and working Indeed, in the 1950s Birmingham's Black middle class often

class.

expressed greater concern over the high crime rate than over the police use of excessive force. But this posture did not last long.

By

the early to mid-1960s, as police violence and rioting escalated in

America's urban centers, the problem of

racist policing

could no

longer be sidestepped. Soon after the 1963 confrontation with Bull

Connor, Birmingham's Civil Rights leaders began placing the issue of police brutality at the top of their agenda.

They had no

fourteen months between January 1966 and

men, the majority of killed

by

police.

whom

During

this

were teenagers or young

same

choice: in the

March 1967, ten Black

period, there

tims or Black female victims of police homicides.

adults,

were

were no White

vic-

The Reverend Fred

Shuttlesworth not only threatened to build alliances with Black militant organizations, but his group distributed a flier proclaiming in

uncertain terms, "Negroes are

Our

TIRED

People. Negroes are tired of

no

of Police Brutality and Killing

'One

Man

Ruling' of 'Justifiable

Robin

38

Homicide' every time 1970s, a

D. G. Kelley

NEGRO

a

number of poor and

KILLED!" During the

IS

working-class African Americans joined

and fought police miscon-

grassroots organizations that investigated

duct, such as the

early

Committee

and the Ala-

against Police Brutality

bama Economic Action Committee (which

investigated at least

"

twenty-seven separate incidents

These

last

1972).

in

:

two movements, which received very

from the Black

elite,

little

support

reflected a fundamental ideological shift in

thinking about police repression. Radical organizations such as the

Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,

Republic of

New Afrika,

Movement,

name

to

the

Brown

but a few,

Community

Berets,

Alert Patrol, the

and the American Indian

began to argue more

explicitly that

urban communities of color constituted "occupied zones" or that they functioned as "internal colonies" vis-a-vis the U.S. nation-state.

Many

of these organizations focused their activity on armed

defense

and monitoring police

activity

in

their

self-

neighborhoods.

Because the police were the most direct manifestations of the colonial state, struggles against

war.

One

the police often resembled an anticolonial

of the earliest organizations to frame the Black freedom

struggle as an anticolonial

war was the Revolutionary Action Move-

ment (RAM), whose members went on

to help

the Black Panthers and the Republic of

1962,

RAM

found groups such

New

Afrika.

clubs, a guerrilla

schools, national Black student organizations, rifle

army made up of youth and unemployed, and Black

farmer cooperatives

—not

keep "community and

just for

economic development but to

guerrilla forces going for a while."

pledged support for national liberation movements

and Latin America

as well as

capitalism across the globe.

RAM that

had been

armed

terrorists

as

in

issued a twelve-point program calling for the develop-

ment of freedom

and former

Founded

also

in Africa, Asia,

the adoption of socialism to replace

28

greatly influenced

NAACP leader in self-defense

They

by Robert Williams, ex-Marine

Monroe, North Carolina,

was more

who

believed

effective for dealing with

White

than nonviolent resistance. With the help of the National

— Slangin' Rocks

.

.

Palestinian Style

1957 created

Rifle Association, Williams in

NAACP

.

39

within his

a rifle club

branch and began talking of the need to "meet lynching

with lynching."

Within two

disowned by the national

years,

Williams was being attacked and

NAACP and hounded as

a fugitive

by

local

and national law enforcement agencies. In 1961, he fled the country altogether, finding political

His

call for

armed

asylum

Cuba and

first in

tion of "violence as the only language that respects" resonated powerfully with

From

spring tled

1

exile,

RAM

militants

war

announced, "This

Potential year,

1964

of a is

FREEDOM NOW!—or pass the ammunition!!"

let it

by 1965 and the eye of the

burn, let

it

is

a

hurri-

house on

fire

burn. Praise the Lord and

29

not alone in this assessment.

James Baldwin had predicted that

significant

In an article enti-

Minority Revolution," Williams

cane will hover over America by 1966. America

would "spread

believed

going to be a violent one, the storm

will reach hurricane proportions

He was

who

against the U.S.

Williams anticipated Black urban uprisings in a

964 edition of his magazine, The Crusader.

"USA: The

China.

White America knows and

that Black people were capable of launching a state.

later in

and the recogni-

self-defense, physical retaliation,

A

in the

year

earlier,

coming years race

to every metropolitan center in the nation

Negro population." The next

Nineteen sixty-four was indeed

six years

a "violent" year,

the Black communities of Harlem, Rochester,

with

riots

New York,

riots

which has

proved them

and Philadelphia. By 1965, these urban revolts had "hurricane proportions."

the writer

a

right.

erupting in Jersey City,

in fact

reached

The eye of the storm landed on the West

Coast in the Black Los Angeles community of Watts. Sparked by idents witnessing yet another Black driver being harassed

res-

by White

police officers, the Watts rebellion turned out to be the worst urban

disturbance in nearly twenty years. By the time the thirty-four people

had

died,

smoke

and more than $35 million

in

cleared,

property

had been destroyed or damaged. The remainder of the decade witnessed the spread of this hurricane across America: violence erupted in

some three hundred

cities,

including Chicago, Washington, D.C.,

Robin

40

D. G. Kelley

Cambridge, Maryland, Providence, Rhode necticut,

Hartford, Con-

Island,

San Francisco, and Phoenix. Altogether, the urban uprisings

involved close to half

a

million African Americans, resulted in mil-

property damage, and

lions of dollars in

left

250 people (mostly

African Americans) dead, 10,000 seriously injured, and countless

Black people homeless. Police and the National Guard turned Black

neighborhoods into war zones, arresting nationwide

at least

60,000

people and employing tanks, machine guns, and tear gas to pacify the collective

were

community.

killed,

1967, for instance, 43 people

In Detroit in

2,000 were wounded, and 5,000 watched their homes

be destroyed by flames that engulfed fourteen square miles of the inner

city.

Elected

from the mayor's

officials,

have seen these uprisings the

American

could not understand

why

Communists, Americans

so

responded to

of social science investiga-

short-lived

economic development

military advisers in Southeast Asia

many North Vietnamese supported the wanted to find out why African

liberal social scientists

rioted.

To the

surprise of several research teams, those

rioted tended to be better educated and

than those

Oval Office, must

sorts since they

a battery

community programs, and

projects. Just as the

who

war of

followed by

crisis militarily,

tors,

as a

office to the

who

One

did not.

more

politically

aware

survey of Detroit Black residents after

the 1967 riot revealed that 86 percent of the respondents identified discrimination and deprivation as the main reasons behind the uprising. Hostility to police brutality

The wave of urban

was

insurrections

also near the top of the

had consequences

for politics

police practices: in Watts and elsewhere, freeway exits partly to facilitate the

movement

were painted on the roofs of houses

and

were widened

of military personnel. in

31

list.

Numbers

South Central Los Angeles so

that aerial and ground forces could be better coordinated. In 1968,

the conservative Republican Richard M. Nixon

House

largely

on

a

law-and-order ticket.

One

won

the White

of Nixon's campaign

promises was to get rid of "trouble makers/' especially militant Black nationalist

organizations

like

the

Republic of

New

Afrika,

the

Slangin' Rocks

National Committee to

.

.

.

Combat

and the Black Panther Party

Palestinian Style

41

Fascism, the Black Liberation Front,

—which FBI

Director

J.

Edgar Hoover

once called "the greatest threat to the internal security of

this

coun-

Under Hoover's Counter-intelligence Program (COINTEL-

try."

PRO), FBI agents on numerous occasions used fake press

releases to

movement leaders, hired undercover agents and/or commit crimes in the name of militant

spread false rumors about to provoke violence

competing organizations, and

organizations, violently attacked

cre-

ated an atmosphere of tension, confusion, and division within the organizations under surveillance. In addition to covert action, police

squads across the country launched a bloody military offensive. In

1969

alone,

arrested.

27 Black Panthers were

When

it

came

organizations, virtually

killed

by police and

at least

749

to protecting the rights of militant or radical all civil liberties

were suspended. The police

raided offices and seized documents, sometimes without a warrant.

They beat and

arrested organizers

on trumped-up

resorted to political assassination, the

the murder of the Chicago Panther leaders

Hampton

in

1

969, both of

raid coordinated

The

known

by

whom

local police

were

Ruben

and even

Mark Clark and Fred

killed in their sleep during a

and the FBI. 32

police targeted Chicano activists as well.

victims was

charges,

most notable example being

Salazar, a

One

popular journalist

of the best-

known

for his

penetrating investigative reporting on police repression and the Chi-

cano community in Los Angeles. Because of his writing, he had received several death threats from police officers. Immediately fol-

lowing the Chicano Moratorium demonstration of August 29, 1970 (organized by the

Brown

Berets),

where police teargassed and shot

unarmed, largely peaceful demonstrators, police surrounded

where Salazar and

his

at

a bar

co-workers had stopped. Claiming they were

searching for an unidentified gunman, they filled the bar with tear gas.

One

scious.

of the canisters struck Salazar and knocked him uncon-

Everyone escaped except

Salazar.

When

his

co-workers

attempted to retrieve him, the police kept anyone from entering the bar,

including medical personnel.

Two

hours

later,

Salazar was dead.

33

42

Robin

D. G. Kelley

commu-

Faced with urban insurrections and the proliferation of

nity-based militant organizations, most urban police departments

viewed ghettos and

as

war zones. By drawing on methods of surveillance

antiguerrilla tactics

developed

in

Vietnam, the police widened

the chasm between themselves and urban communities of color as well as liberal politicians. Indeed,

when

city officials tried to

respond

to civilian complaints about police abuses, they often faced a mutiny. In the late

1960s

in

New York City,

for example, conservative, openly

elements came to dominate the police force, mobilizing in

racist

large part in opposition to the liberal

ported

a civilian

mayor John

Lindsay,

who

sup-

review board to adjudicate the growing number of

complaints of police abuses. The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association

became

so powerful

dent, John

J.

and contentious that

Cassese, told his

in

August 1968

29,000-member constituency

gard orders by their superiors to use restraint rioters

mob

and protesters. That same

year, off-duty

when

presi-

to disre-

dealing with

cops participated

in a

members and

their supporters in

They were there

to attend a hearing

attack on Black Panther Party

front of a Brooklyn courthouse. in

its

the case of three Panthers accused of assaulting a police officer.

The strengthening of

racist

New

was not limited to

elements

in

urban police departments

York. In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles,

Philadelphia, and Oakland, groups such as the John Birch Society

and the Ku Klux Klan were having success recruiting police

Cops were not the only ones moving exception of

Jimmy

farther right.

Carter's fleeting term in the

officers.

34

With the

White House,

this

period marked the beginning of two and a half decades of Republi-

can

rule,

an anti-Black and anti-immigrant backlash, and a general

dismantling of radical organizations fighting for communities of color.

As

a result of intense police repression, incarceration, internal

squabbling (caused in part by paid agents provocateurs), and a national right-wing drift

ments went down spill

into

among

the populace, most of these move-

in flames. Fearing that ghetto rebellions

White suburbs, and

that their taxes

would

were being used to sup-

port lazy colored folks on welfare, White Americans increasingly

came

to believe that "minorities," particularly African Americans,

Slangin' Rocks

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

43

needed to stop complaining. Black people, they longer had any excuses since the Civil Rights

ceeded

in abolishing racism

once and for

rationalized,

movement had

35

all.

Most African Americans, however, knew another gether. tion,

The next two decades were

reality

alto-

characterized by deindustrializa-

permanent unemployment, White

flight,

disinvestment in urban

the shrinking of city services, the elimination of state and fed-

areas,

youth and job programs,

eral

no

suc-

a rollback of affirmative action pro-

grams, cutbacks in housing, urban development, and education, and a scaling

to

back of agencies that investigate and enforce

name but

a

During Reagan's two terms

46 percent, while funding

in office, military

for housing

education by 70 percent. The

turn.

spending increased by

was slashed by 77 percent and

number of families

Dependent Children was cut back

Families with

civil rights laws,

few disastrous consequences of the rightward

eligible for

Aid

substantially

to

While

pushing for tax breaks for the very rich in hopes of stimulating the

economy, the Reagan administration reduced the Federal Food

Stamp program by $2 programs by $1.7

billion

billion.

Racist violence

was

and cut back federal child nutrition

36

also resurgent during this period.

of racially motivated assaults rose dramatically,

many

of

The number them occur-

on college campuses across the country. Between 1982 and

ring

1989, the States

number

grew

of hate crimes reported annually in the United

threefold. In 1981, police officers in Florida

sippi generated an

atmosphere of terror by circulating

a

and Missis-

mock

hunt-

ing flyer announcing "open season" for shooting "Porch Monkeys.

Regionally

known

as

Negro, Nigger, Saucer Lips, Yard Apes, Jungle

Bunnies, Spear Chuckers, Burr Heads, Spooks, and the Pittsburgh Pirates."

Other

signs pointing to a resurgence of racism in the 1980s

include the proliferation of White supremacist organizations such as

the

Ku Klux

Klan.

By the

bership and even gained

Tom

late 1970s, the

some

Klan had tripled

Metzger, the "Grand Dragon" of the

enough votes

to

nia's Forty-third

its

mem-

influence in electoral politics. In 1980,

Ku Klux

win the Democratic primary

in

Klan, garnered

Southern Califor-

Congressional District. Similarly, David Duke, for-

Robin

44

D. G. Kelley

mer Klansman and founder of the National Association Advancement of White

People,

for the

was elected to the Louisiana House

of Representatives. Despite such electoral affirmation, the Klan did

not trade in their white sheets or their guns. In 1978-79, Klansmen initiated a reign of terror against Black people,

firebombing of homes, churches, and schools

towns and southern

rural areas,

because

in

in

over one hundred

and drive-by shootings into the homes of

NAACP leaders.'

tions, in part

which included the

Very few of these incidents led to convic-

some

instances local police

Greensboro, North Carolina, where five

were complicit.

November

Perhaps the worst incident occurred on

3,

1979, in

members of the Communist

Workers Party were murdered by Klansmen and Nazis during an anti-Klan demonstration.

Not only did the Greensboro

police

know

of the Klan's plan to attack the demonstration but, just minutes

before the confrontation, nearly the other side of town for

a

stopped, there was not a cop

all

on-duty officers were called to

"lunch" break.

in sight.

When

the shooting

Although the entire episode

was caught on videotape, the all-White jury concluded that there

was

insufficient evidence to convict

anyom

Emboldened by the changed mood seemed

to

escalate

in

America, police violence

around the mid- to

beginning

late- 1970s.

Throughout the country, African Americans had become the most likely victims of police violence.

According to one study, African

Americans constituted 46 percent of the people 1975.

Out West,

include Chicanos such as

Department

demanded an

Danny

Trevino,

murdered by San Jose

against Latinos

who

by Oakland police

killing

many complaints against the Los Angeles when Chicano community activists

that

investigation and greater accountability,

destroyed their

1979

in

and Juan Zepeda, blackjacked to death by San Antonio

police. Civilians filed so

Police

by police

the better-known victims of police homicides

police in 1976; Jose Barlow Benavidez, fatally shot officers;

killed

files

and

officials

to cover

up an obvious pattern of violence

One

incident they could not bury was the

Blacks.

of Eula

LAPD

Mae

Love. Love, a thirty-nine-year-old

stood about five feet four inches

tall,

was shot

a

woman

dozen times by

— Slangin' Rocks

two

LAPD

officers

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

who were called to the man from turning

scene after she tried to

stop a gas maintenance arrived, she

was armed with

45

off her gas.

a kitchen knife

;

When

they

but the only thing she

stabbed was a tree in her yard. Three years

later,

at least fifteen

deaths were caused by chokeholds administered by Los Angeles police officers attempting to subdue suspects. Police Chief Darryl

Gates noted,

"We may be

chokehold]

applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as

is

they do on normal people."

finding that in

some

blacks

when

[the

39

Residents of these communities did not accept police abuse with-

The

radical

movement

shell of its

former

self,

out a

mere

fight.

occupying army, war was nity outside of

but

against police repression

as long as the police acted like

on. In a predominantly Black

still

a

an

commu-

Miami, yet another unjustified police homicide sparked

one of the worst urban insurrections in

was

in over a decade. It

December 1979, when Arthur McDuffie,

began back

a thirty-three-year-old

Black insurance executive, was beaten to death by police officers in

Dade County, had

Florida.

resisted arrest,

The

all-

was driving

but eyewitnesses believed

of brutality. However, in

an

police said he

May

White jury returned

it

was

recklessly

and

a clear cut case

1980, to widespread shock and dismay,

a not- guilty verdict for all of the officers

involved. Local activists quickly took to the streets of

Miami and

organized a silent protest march of 5,000 to the police department

downtown Miami. Not everyone was silent, participants began chanting, "We want justice!" That

and courthouse though; several night, the

predominantly Black and poor communities of Liberty

City, Brownsville,

turning over

and bottles cleared,

in

Overton, and Coconut Grove exploded in anger

cars, setting fire to buildings, looting,

and National Guardsmen.

at police

Miami's gross

fiscal losses

400 people were injured and arrested;

and

On

P.M. to

several

closer inspection, the

6 A.M.

When

the

exceeded $250 million;

were

a fifty-two-square-mile area

under curfew from 8

throwing rocks

of

killed;

smoke at least

over 1,250 were

Dade County was placed

40

Miami

rebellion

was not

just a sponta-

neous response to an unfair verdict. For the residents of Liberty City

46

Robin

D. G. Kelley

and other poor Black communities, McDuffie's death was one of

a

string of incidents of police brutality and racial harassment that had

gone unchecked during the 1970s. The

by

frustrations caused

gration

that

policies

Haitians.

It

joblessness,

riot

product of Black

economic deprivation, and immi-

favored White

clearly

a

Cubans over Black

marked the most dramatic example of the growing

also

feeling of political

among poor and working-class when the number of Black elected offi-

powerlessness

African Americans. In an age

had increased dramatically and

cials

was

achieved tremendous influence

Civil

Rights

had

leaders

making, Miami's

in national policy

Black rebels viewed their "leaders" with a mixture of distrust and

apprehension.

41

The Miami

uprising and the failure of Black leadership were but

forebodings of

more ominous times

yet to come. By the end of the

1970s, police killings and nonlethal acts of brutality central political issue

among

emerged

as a

African Americans. Between 1979 and

1982, protests were organized throughout the country around spe-

some of the more

cases of police violence,

cific

incidents occurring in Philadelphia,

New

highly publicized

Orleans, Memphis, Miami,

Washington, D.C., Birmingham, Oakland, and Detroit (where the police department

was notorious

arrestees). In Philadelphia, for

for sexually harassing Black female

example, police-civilian tensions esca-

lated into one of the

most brutal episodes of violence

decade. After Wilson

Goode was

elected the

first

in at least a

Black mayor in

Philadelphia's history in 1983, he immediately found himself caught

between and

a

White constituency

a police force

1986

a federal

wanted

a legacy of corruption

a

law-and-order mayor

and

brutality. In fact, in

grand jury indicted seven Philadelphia police officers

who had worked ing at least

with

that

in the narcotics division for racketeering

$400,000 plus quantities of cocaine from drug

and extortdealers.

42

But the key event was Goode's decision to allow the police to

bomb

the headquarters of a Black nationalist organization called

MOVE

in

May

of 1985. Situated in the Philadelphia neighborhood

of Powelton Village,

MOVE had attempted to create a rural, commu-

SlangirT Rocks

nal

environment

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

middle of the

in the

from neighbors and

MOVE members'

Mayor Frank Rizzo

tried to root the

nated in a shoot-out that

both

sides. In a similar

left

one

city.

As

group out

MOVE

complaints

toward

standoff seven years

in 1978. This culmi-

and

Goode authorized

later, 1 1

people, including 5

250 people homeless.

left

bombing marred Goode 's administration and

tions with Philadelphia's Black

police,

dead and several injured on

the dropping of an aerial bomb, which killed

The

a result of

hostile attitude

officer

children, destroyed sixty-one homes,

47

community

he

until

his rela-

left office in

1991. Perhaps the biggest blow to Goode's administration was that

the commission appointed to investigate the bombing concluded that racism strongly influenced the actions of the Philadelphia police force.

This was absolutely clear from the

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Gregore

J.

words spoken by

first

Sambor,

who announced

over the bullhorn at the beginning of the assault, "Attention

This

is

MOVE!

America!" 43

Dispatches from Lala Land:

On Seeing the

It's

been happening to us

camcorder every time

it

Future

in

for years.

the Present

It's

just

we

didn't have a

happened.

—

Ice

Cube on

the

Rodney King beating

{MTV News interview, May 3, While

civil rights activists

the country surprisingly,

the

and

civil liberties

advocates from across

condemned the bombing, the Goode seemed

bombing of

to get less criticism

MOVE

being a Black mayor

1992)

administration,

from African Americans

than one might have expected.

may have had something

to

Of

do with

for

course, it,

but

Goode had his share of defenders in Philadelphia's Black community, some of whom regarded MOVE activists as nuisances or, worse, common thugs. More significantly, legitimate con-

that's

not

all.

Robin

48

cern for crime in the 1980s

when

—often referred

to as the "age of crack,"

street violence intensified as various gangs battled for control

over drug markets police.

more

D. G. Kelley

The

—contributed to

fact that

likely to

be

a

kind of uneasy tolerance for the

poor inner-city residents are twenty-five times

a victim of street

crime than someone living

in a

wealthy suburb speaks profoundly to the complex, often ambivalent relationship urban Blacks have toward the police. Unfortunately, the

government-declared "war on drugs" did more to promote unbridled police repression than to

make

The "model community"

the streets

safer.

44

war on drugs was South Central

for the

Los Angeles, where high-powered police helicopters, patrolmen riot gear,

in

and even small tanks armed with battering rams became

part of the urban landscape in the early 1980s. Housing projects

resembled minimum-security prisons equipped with ing and mini police stations;

and

identity cards

Police Chief Gates

the arrest of "looking

visitors

many

residents

some 1,500 Black youths

anti-gang task force database.

new

LA

resulting in

Although most were charged with minor

some were not charged

but simply had their names and addresses logged

Ironically,

1988,

In

HAMMER,

to carry

South Central for merely

in

offenses like curfew and traffic violations, all

were required

were routinely searched.

implemented Operation

suspicious."

fortified fenc-

the

LAPD

4'

some ways made matters

technologies have in

worse for poor, inner-city

in

at

residents.

The use of computer

has had a profoundly negative impact on justice.

databases

First, street

access

databases generally do not indicate the disposition of the case

(whether or not the accused was convicted or acquitted), nor are they error

free. Yet,

and error

free,

the

new technology

thus enabling

jury in the street. If your

innocent.

And

police, juries,

jail

means that

name

is

used

as if

it

officers to act as

appears,

you

were value

free

both judge and

are guilty unless proven

given the backlog of cases and racial prejudice

among

and judges, public defenders tend to plea-bargain for

when

appears innocent, because

it

time and speeds the process. In the long run, however,

it

Blacks and Latinos even reduces

some

a

young person

a client

just beginning

his or her adult life

now

Slangin' Rocks

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

49

has a conviction, whether or not he or she has ever, in victed.

and

And when one

it is

is

difficult to rent

the proliferation of

new

convicted, one

fact,

been con-

practically unemployable,

is

an apartment or obtain insurance. Second, high-tech patrol

cars,

helicopters equipped

with sophisticated infrared cameras and 30-million-candlepower

and phone taps has widened

spotlights, radios, radar, telemonitors,

the chasm between the police and those being policed.

Few urban

cops can boast of the kind of intimate, local knowledge that earlier generations of officers assigned

might have had.

ties

new technology

Finally,

urban White ethnic communi-

to, say,

one of the worst manifestations of the

has been the rapid increase in

To deal with the problem of overcrowding offenders are allowed to stay

monitoring device. While this

The

entire

lives falls

That the war on drugs could and

and

in jails

prisons,

some

home but must wear an electronic may seem more humane on the sur-

household becomes incarcerated, and the neigh-

borhood where the offender

repression,

incarceration."

the burden of "state support" for prisoners to

face, it actually shifts

the family.

"home

under heavier

result in

more

surveillance.

46

police abuses, greater

a suspension of civil liberties for

all

inner-city resi-

dents should not be surprising, given the long history of policing

communities of

The

color.

colonial relationship that originally struc-

tured the police presence remains virtually unchanged. As occupying armies with almost no organic connection to the neighborhoods to

which they ferently is

suspect.

his or

are assigned, these big-city police forces operate

It is

a rare cop, even

among

her primary task as working

urban communities of the

city,

and their job

for,

color. Instead,

is

Blacks and Latinos, or being

the police

employed

work

sure the

permanent It

dif-

who

sees

by,

poor

for the state or

to keep an entire criminalized population in

check, to contain the chaos of the ghetto within

make

no

from the imperial forces of yesterday: every colonial subject

most unruly subjects

stay in line.

its

walls,

and to

They operate

in a

state of war.

just so

happened that the "model community"

drugs was the

site for

for the

war on

one of the most recent and most devastating

insurrections in the long, brutal history of urban America's colonial

Robin

50

wars.

Not

surprisingly, the catalyst for the

1992 was officers lier.

D. G. Kelley

ended

a police brutality trial that

who had

viciously beaten

Los Angeles rebellion of in the acquittal of four

Rodney King

months

thirteen

ear-

Unlike most incidents of police brutality, this one was captured

on videotape. The entire nation watched King writhe absorbed

fifty-six

blows

to punching, kicking,

in a

and whacking him with

shocked him twice with King was

over,

left

a

with

wooden

a

high-voltage stun gun.

broken cheekbone, nine

a

in

pain as he

span of eighty-one seconds. In addition baton, police

When

it

was

all

skull fractures, a

shattered eye socket, a broken ankle, and the need for twenty stitches in his face.

For most viewers, irrespective of race, the video tape proved irrefutably that the officers involved in the beating used excessive force.

dict

when

Thus,

the all-White jury handed

on April 29, 1992, the

city

exploded with

down

a not-guilty ver-

rage. Buildings

burned

from West Los Angeles and Watts to Koreatown, Long Beach, and Santa Monica.

Of

the

first

5,000 people arrested, 52 percent were

Latino and only 39 percent were African American. By the time the rioting

came

to a halt

on

May

58 people had been

2, at least

killed

(26 African Americans, 18 Latinos, 10 Whites, 2 Asians, 2 unknown)

and thousands were injured. The destroyed or badly damaged. a staggering

$785

million.

fires left

more than 5,000

buildings

The estimated property damage

The

riots

had

a ripple effect

totaled

beyond Los

Angeles, as smaller and less volatile protests erupted in San Francisco, Atlanta, Las Vegas,

New

York

City, Seattle,

D.C. More than any other event, the

world the

rest of the

and

classist

LA

tragic plight of

character of policing.

Tampa, and Washington,

rebellion dramatized to the

urban America and the

And

because

it

racist

occurred during

a

presidential election year, there

was enormous pressure on President

prompt

response. Bush proposed Operation

George Bush

Weed and

to offer a

Seed, an urban policy that

would provide

entrepreneurs willing to invest in inner for disadvantaged children, and,

cities,

some

most important,

a

big tax breaks to

limited programs

massive buildup

of the police and criminal justice system. Indeed, the real emphasis

was on the "weed" component rather than the "seed" component;

Slangin' Rocks

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

nearly 80 percent of the proposed

marked

for policing.

$500 million

was

allocation

ear-

47

Every farmer knows by

now that

the world are meaningless

What

51

needs to change

is

if

all

the "weeding" and "seeding" in

the structure of the garden

is

flawed.

the role of the police and their relationship

to urban communities of color.

The

colonial mentality, rooted in slav-

ery and imperialism, that has structured the entire history of policing in

urban America needs to be overturned. Indeed,

would go

I

so far as to propose the complete dismantling

of police departments (and consequently the entire criminal justice

system) as

we know

radical proposal for

Perhaps

it.

we might

community-based

return to the long-standing

policing.

Imagine institutions

and run by

for public safety structured along nonmilitary lines

elected nity

community

boards!

I

members be employed

am

to do the

work of

policing; rather,

suggesting that the very job itself be reinvented.

public safety

would require

ees and volunteers

new modes

New

am

institutions of

of training. Employ-

to attend intensive workshops

on

other things, and the institutions of public safety would have

to reflect the racial and ethnic

makeup of the communities they

serve and to maintain an equal gender balance in

They would be required work and its

I

domestic abuse, rape, violence, and inequality,

race, gender, sexuality,

among

radically

would have

commu-

not simply proposing that

all

areas of work.

to reside in the neighborhood in

which they

to conduct a thorough study of that neighborhood in

historical, social,

like writing

economic, and psychological dimensions

—

all

of

a little

an honors thesis before graduating from the "academy of

public safety."

Pipe dreams, perhaps. real

Of course, am I

problem of crime and violence

all

too cognizant of the very

in the inner cities,

and

I

know

that the kind of public safety institutions I'm imagining will require significant ideological

and cultural changes before anything

can happen.

left

Still

I'm

wondering: what would

dismantling the police and reconstructing collective safety? After

all,

new ways

how many big-city

havens for corruption, crime

rings,

we

like this

really lose

by

of ensuring our

precincts have

become

drug dealing, prostitution, and the

Robin

52

How many

like?

lives

have been

racist police officers feel free, if

of color?

ties

When

D. G. Kelley

people

lost or

maimed because

not obligated, to terrorize communi-

do we begin to break the cycle of state

Memorandum: Why We

terror!'

Can't Wait

Eleanor Bumpurs. Michael Stewart. Anthony Baez. Michael

Wayne

Clark. Yong Xin Huang. Benjamin Nunez. Kuthurima Mwaria. Julio

Mohammed

Nunez. Maria Rivas.

Aswan "Keshawn"

Paolina.

Donald

thorne. Lori Leitner.

"Rock"

ley

Scott.

Jr.

Bilal Ashraf.

Green.

Gary Glenn.

By.

Tammy

Darryl Edwards.

Yates.

Jorge Guillen. Eric Smith. Angel Castro

Anthony

Jonny

Starks.

E.

Gammage. Malice

Jose hturalde lames Johnson. Darlene

Lujan. Bobby Mitchell.

tal

Fleming. Kenneth Arnold. Paul Mills. Stan-

Donnell "Bo" Lucas.

Maneia

\

Haw-

Watson. Nathaniel Gains. Dion

Kouiy Johnson.

Gilberto Cruz.

Assassa. Leonard Lawton. Diogenes

Tiller.

Crys-

Roy Hoskins. Dannie Alexan-

tckey Finklea.

Mark Anthony Longo. Osiris E. Galan. Torrey Donovan Jacobs. Yvon Guerrier Ahnn Barroso. Marcillus Miller. Brenda Forester. Michael Wayne Johnson. David Ortiz. Arturo Jimenez. Miguel Ruiz. Josie Gay. Damian Garcia. Manuel Hernandez. Eliberto Saldana. Elzie Coleman. Tracy Mayberry. De Andre Harrison. John Daniels Jr. Michael Bryant.

der.

Jose

Manuel Sanchez.

Herrera

Jr.

Dwight

Justice

Stiggons.

Hue

and Luke Grinnage. Baraka Andre

Jones.

Netherly. Sonji Taylor. Fernando

Truong.

Salomon Hernandez. Raphael

Adams. Dannette

Hall. Carolyn

Tama T Ava. Leon

Kao. Brandon Auger.

LaTanya

Hasan

Amadu

Fisher.

Diallo.

Daniels.

James Quarles. Kuan Chung

Tyisha Miller. Devon Nelson.

Haggerty. Robert Russ. Michael Zinzun. Brother Akenshahn.

Mumia Abu

Jamal. You. Me.

Our children.

.

.

.

NOTES 1.

Class

Robin D. G.

(New

Kelley,

Race Rebels: Culture,

Politics,

and

the Black

Working

York: Free Press, 1994), 202-5; idem, "Straight from Underground,"

The Nation 254,

no.

22 (June

8,

1992): 793-96.

Slangin' Rocks

.

Palestinian Style

.

A

Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America:

2.

York: Harper Collins, 1988)

The Unbroken Past of

quest:

(New

;

and

the

American West (New York: Norton, 1987); Dee

Leon Higginbotham

Jr.,

In the Matter of

American Legal Process (New York: Oxford University

Mary Frances

1978);

(New

History of Chicanos, 3rd ed.

1-33; Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conthe

York: Holt, Rinehart, 1971); A.

Color: Race

53

My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Brown, Bury

Berry, Black Resistance/White

Law:

A

Press,

History of Constitu-

Racism (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971).

tional 3.

.

W.

Du

E. B.

Bois,

Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880:

toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt

Democracy

in

America, 1860-1880 (reprint,

New

York:

&

of Slavery

Row, 1988); Leon Litwack, "Been

(New York:

Dan T.

Knopf, 1979);

W.

No

Eric

Storm So Long": The Aftermath

in the

When

Carter,

White

Trelease,

(New

Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction

George C. Rable, But There Was

Atheneum, 1962);

the

War Was

Over: The

1865-1867 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana

Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South,

State University Press, 1985); Allen

Essay

1863-1877 (New York:

Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution,

Harper

An

Reconstruct

to

Terror:

The Ku Klux Klan

York: Harper

&

Row, 1971);

Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of

Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984); Ira Berlin, Barbara

Rowland, and Joseph Reidy, Slaves

Fields, Leslie

No More: Three Essays on Eman-

War (New York: Cambridge

cipation

and

Cooper

Davis, Neglected Stories: The Constitution of Family Values

Hill

the Civil

Sidney

Cities, 5.

L. Hairing, Policing

1865-1915 (New Brunswick,

North Carolina

of Judge Lynch

(New

Southern Horrors, York:

a Class

York:

N.J.:

Arno

A

Rutgers University Press, 1983).

Press, 1933);

Press, 1969);

Record,

Stewart

Mob

Rule in

Emory

1997); Leon

F.

A

Orleans,

New

South:

Illinois Press,

(Chapel

On

Hill:

Lynchings:

An Analy-

Illinois Press,

1995);

Georgia and Virginia,

1993); idem, ed., Under SenUniversity of North Carolina

Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners

in the

Age of Jim

York: Knopf, 1998), 280-325; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence

Black Response: From Reconstruction

Uni-

1862-1931 (New

Festival of Violence:

1882-1930 (Urbana: University of

1880-1930 (Urbana: University of

Crow (New

New

Tolnay,

Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the

tence of Death: Lynching in the South

Hill:

Walter White, Rope &d Faggot: A Biography

York: Knopf, 1929); Ida B. Wells- Barnett,

Red

of Southern Lynchings,

Press,

The Experience of American

Society:

Arthur Franklin Raper, The Tragedy of Lynching, 1899- (Chapel

versity of

W

(New

and Wang, 1997), 147-49, 153-54.

4.

sis

University Press, 1992); Peggy

to

and

Montgomery (Amherst: University of

Massachusetts Press, 1988), 30-144, passim. Shapiro does an excellent job of placing lynching in the context of empire.

.

Robin

54

My

6.

D. G. Kelley

formulation owes a great deal to Joy James, Resisting State Violence:

and Race

Radicalism, Gender,

in

U.S. Culture (Minneapolis: University

of Min-

nesota Press, 1996), 28-33.

Daniel G. Brinton, Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

7.

[New

York: Hodges, 1890), 287, quoted in Lee D. Baker, From Savage

to

Negro:

Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 36.

Dowd

Jacquelyn

8.

Hall, Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel

Women's Campaign against Lynching, Press,

1993), 129-57; idem,

Rape, and Racial Violence,"

rev. ed.

in

Powers of Desire: The

Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Press, 1983),

(New

in

Each Body": Women,

Politics of Sexuality, ed.

Thompson (New

the

Columbia University

York:

"The Mind That Burns

Ames and

Ann

York: Monthly Review

328^9.

9. Clifford

M. Kuhn, Harlon

Oral History of the

E. Jove,

and

Bernard West, Liinng Atlanta:

E.

1914-1948 (Athens: University of Georgia

City,

An

Press, 1990),

190; Kelley, Race Rebels, 49. 10.

Robert

(Philadelphia: Judiciary,

L.

Zangrando, The

Temple University

Crime of

NAACP

Crusade against Lynching, 1909-1950

Press, 1980); U.S.

Congress,

the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress,

[and Other]

Bills to

Process of Law

Assure

and Equal

to

Ralph Ginzburg, 1996); see lence

and Black

1 1

ters

also,

Protection of Laws,

Willard

and

Haynes,

A

1948). There are

in

42

Due

numerous

hands of lynch mobs

100 Years of Lynching (Baltimore: Black Classics

Litwack, Trouble

in

Press,

Mind, 263-65, 424-25; Shapiro, White Vio-

Response, 30-249, passim.

B.

Gatewood

Jr.,

"Smoked Yankees" and

the Struggle for Empire: Let-

Illinois Press,

1971), 32, 35-36.

White Violence and Black Response, 93-201, passim; Robert V.

Night of Violence: The Houston Riot of 1917 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana

State University Press,

Reform

S.

Prevent the Crime of Lynching,

GPO,

U.S.

from Negro Soldiers (Urbana: University of 12. Shapiro,

to

officers releasing suspects into the

ed.,

Committee on

Second Session, on

Persons within the Jurisdiction of Every State

and for Other Purposes (Washington, D.C.: examples of police

Committee on the

lynching: Hearings before a Subcommittee of the

1976); Charles Crowe, "Racial Violence and Social

— Origins of the Atlanta Riot of 1906," Journal of Negro History 53 (July

1968): 234-56; William Ivy Hair, Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles

and

the

New

Orleans Race Riot of 1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976);

Anne

J.

Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis

(Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1971);

and Black Reaction

John D. Weaver, The Brownsville

Raid (New York: Norton, 1970); John Dittmer, Black Georgia

in the Progressive

Slangin' Rocks

Era,

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

1900-1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois

55

Press, 1977),

Howard

138-39;

N.

Rabinowitz, "The Conflict between Blacks and the Police in the Urban South,

1865-1900," Historian 39 (November 1976}: 62-76. 13. Elliot Press,

Rudwick, Race Riot at East

1964); "Report on the Special

Investigate the

1917-1970, Violence

East

and Black

Louis (Urbana: University of

Louis Riots," in The

St.

Anthony

ed.

St.

Politics

(New York: Macmillan,

Piatt

Illinois

Committee Authorized by Congress of Riot

to

Commissions,

1971), 68; Shapiro, White

Response, 115-17.

White Violence and Black Response, 107.

14. Shapiro,

15. Ibid., 108;

Haynes,

A Night of Violence.

White Violence and Black Response, 145-57; Mary Frances Berry

16. Shapiro,

and John Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience

in

America (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 242. 17. Hall, Revolt against Chivalry;

Robin D. G.

Kelley,

Hammer and

Hoe:

Alabama Communists during

the

North Carolina

78-91; Gail Williams O'Brien, The Color of Law:

Race, Violence

Press, 1990),

and

Great Depression (Chapel

War II

Justice in the Post-World

Hill:

South (Chapel

University of

Hill:

University

of North Carolina Press, 1999). 18. City of

sion on the

New York,

The Complete Report of Mayor LaGuardia's Commis-

Harlem Riot of March

113, 114; Cheryl Greenberg,

Depression

(New York: Oxford

19. Pete Daniel, II,"

1935

19,

Or Does

(reprint,

It

New York: Arno Press,

1969),

Explode: Black Harlem in the Great

University Press, 1991), 193-94, 211.

"Going among Strangers: Southern Reactions to World War

Journal of American History 77

(December 1990): 886-91

World A-Coming": Inside Black America (Boston: Houghton Dalfiume, Fighting on Two Fronts: Desegregation of the

(Columbia: University of Missouri

Press, 1969);

1;

Roi Ottley, "New

Mifflin, 1943);

Armed

Forces,

Herbert Garfinkel,

Richard

1939-1953

When

Negroes

March: The March on Washington Movement

in the Organizational Policies for

FEPC

Kellogg, "Civil Rights Conscious-

(Glencoe,

111.:

Free Press, 1959); Peter

ness in the 1940's," Historian 42

Afro-American and the Second World

Harvard

Sitkoff,

National Issue

A New

J.

(November 1979): 18-41; Neil A. Wynn, The

War (New York: Holmes and

(New York: Oxford

University Press, 1978), 298-325, Philip Foner,

Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981 Publishers, 1981), 239, 243; ica:

"A

Rainbow

Meier, 1975);

Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a

George

at Midnight"

(New

Lipsitz, Class

(New

York: Internationa]

and Culture

in

Cold War Amer-

York: Praeger, 1981), 14-28; Gerald R. Gill,

"Dissent, Discontent and Disinterest: Afro-American Opposition to the States

I

Jnited

Wars of the Twentieth Century" (unpublished book manuscript, 1988).

Robin

56

20. Kelley,

A

eds.,

216-17.

James A. Burran, "Urban Racial Violence

21. II:

Hammer and Hoe,

D. G. Kelley

Comparative Overview/

From

the

Old South

to the

in

Walter

J.

New: Essays on

Detroit:

Temple University

tion (Austin: S.

Guy

Moore

Jr.,

Capeci

J.

Jr.,

Race Relations

in

Jr.,

idem, The Harlem Riot of 1943 (Philadelphia:

Press, 1984); Press, 1977).

Race Relations

White Violence and Black 23. Mauricio

B.

The Sojourner Truth Housing Controversy of 1942 (Philadelphia:

Temple University

22. Capeci

South during World War

and Winfred

Jr.

the Transitional South (Westport,

Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), 167-77; Dominic

Wartime

in the

Fraser

in

Wartime

Respottse, 319,

Mazon, The Zoot-Suit

from Shapiro,

Detroit; quotations

327.

Riots:

The Psychology of Symbolic Annihila-

University of Texas Press, 1984); Acuna, Occupied America, 254-58;

Endore, The Sleepy Lagoon Mystery (San Francisco:

Associates, 1972); Alice Greenfield, dice (Los Angeles: Citizen's

The Sleepy Lagoon Case:

Committee

for the

A A

and E Research Pageant of Preju-

Defense of Mexican- American

Youth, 1942); Carey McWilliams, "Second Thoughts," The Nation 228 (April 1979): 358; James

S.

Dimitroff, "The 1942 Sleepy

Mexican-American Militancy 24.

Los Angeles" (B.A. honors

in

UCLA,

1968).

The

and Blassingame, Long Memory, 242.

best examination of police repression in the postwar urban South

diately after

World War

community

in

legal

II,

is

As she demonstrates, imme-

Gail Williams O'Brien's stunning The Color of Law.

Black

thesis,

7,

for

Acuna, Occupied America, 292-93.

25. Berry

26.

Lagoon Murder, Catalyst

and extralegal violence was

a

key issue facing the

Columbia, Tennessee.

27. Kelley, Race Rebels, 92-99. 28.

Maxwell C. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement:

an Urban Revolutionary

Movement

in

A

Case Study of

Western Capitalist Society" (M.A.

thesis,

Atlanta University, 1986), 205-6; Donald Freeman, "The Cleveland Story," Liberator 3, no. 6 (June 1963):

7,

18;

'Afro American Youth and the

1965): 4-7; 29.

RAM,

Rolland Snellings (Askia

Bandung World,"

Muhammad

Liberator

Toure),

5, no. 2 (February

The World Black Revolution (pamphlet, 1966).

The Crusader

5, no.

4 (May-June 1964).

On

Williams, see

Timothy

B.

Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Marcellus C. Barksdale, "Robert

Williams and the Indigenous Civil Rights

Movement

in

Monroe, North Carolina,

1961," Journal of Negro History 69 (Spring 1984): 73-89; as well as Williams's

own

writings, particularly Negroes with

1962) and 30.

Listen, Brother

Guns (New

(New York: World View

James Baldwin, Nobody Knows

My

York: Marzani and Munsell,

Publishers, 1968).

Name: More Notes

of

a Native Son

.

Slangin' Rocks

(New York:

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

Dial Press, 1961), 192; Herbert

Urban Class

Conflict," in

Urban

J.

57

Gans, "The Ghetto Rebellions and

Riots: Violence

and

Social Change, ed.

Connery (New York: Vintage, 1969), 45-54; Manning Marable, The Second Reconstruction

Rebellion:

in

Robert H.

Race, Reform

and

Black America, 1945-1990, 2nd ed. (Jack-

son: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 92-93.

Vietnam

3 1 Tracy Tullis, "A

terinsurgency" (Ph.D.

at

Home:

New York

diss.,

Policing the

Ghetto

in the

University, 1998); Harlan

Era of Coun-

Hahn, "Ghetto

Sentiments on Violence," Science and Society 33 (Spring 1969): 197-208; Gerald

Home, The

Fire This Time:

The Watts Uprising and

1960s (Charlottesville:

the

University Press of Virginia, 1995); Report of the National Advisory Commission

on Civil Disorders 32.

Kenneth

(New York: Bantam

1960-1972 (New York: Free lege,

Books, 1968).

O'Reilly, Racial Matters:

The FBI's Secret

Press, 1989),

File

on Black America,

229-324; Donner,

Protectors of Privi-

98, 105-6.

33.

Edward

Escobar, "The Dialectics of Repression:

The Los Angeles

Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968-1971," Journal tory 74,

34.

Police

of American His-

(March 1993), 1483-504; Acuna, Occupied America, 345-50.

On

the Cassese statement, see Donner, Protectors of

241-43, 246, 253.

On

John C. Cooper, The Press, 1980);

the rising racism and

Police

idem, You

and

ica (Port

Washington, N.Y: Kennikat

Perhaps

Some

Facts)

on Police

impact on urban policing, see

its

Washington,

the Ghetto (Port

Can Hear Them

194-95,

Privilege,

Knocking:

NY:

Kennikat

A Study in the Policing of AmerA. L. Kobler, "Figures (and

Press, 1981);

of Civilians in the United States,

Killing

1965-1969," Journal of Social Issues 31 (1975), 163-91; Bruce Pierce, "Blacks

and Law Enforcement: Towards Police Brutality Reduction," Black Scholar 17 (1986): 49-54; D. ments," Crime 35. Profit

George

M.

Rafky, "Racial Discrimination in

and Delinquency Lipsitz,

from Identity

The Possessive Investment

Politics (Philadelphia:

in Whiteness:

Temple University

1-46; Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race ican Politics Welfare:

How Racism

sity Press,

in

(New York: New

Press, 1997),

Undermined

Police Depart-

the

Press,

White People 1998), esp.

and

the Mainsprings of Amer-

Jill

Quandango, The Color of

310-14;

War on

How

Poverty

(New York: Oxford

Univer-

1994); Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice

American Thought and

Edsall

Urban

21, no. 3 (1975): 233-42.

and Mary D.

on American

Politics

Edsall,

(New

Policy (Boston:

Beacon

Press,

1995);

Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race,

York: Norton, 1991); Peter N. Carroll,

Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982). 36. Marable, Race, Reform

and

Rebellion,

180-83.

in the

Thomas Byrne

Rights, It

and Taxes

Seemed Like

1970s (Now York:

Robin

58

3".

174-78;

Ibid.,

flier

quoted

D. G. Kelley

Manning Marable, How Capitalism

in

Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1983], 239; Kelley, Into the Fin

38. Elizabeth

Wheaton, Codename Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro

Killings

(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). 39.

Mike

Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future

Verso, 1990), 267-92;

M. W. Meyer,

iti

Los Angeles (London:

"Police Shootings at Minorities:

The Case of

Los Angeles," Annals 452 (1980): 98-1 10; Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (Los Angeles, 1991); Charles

More

"Blacks

Susceptible to Chokeholds?" Los Angeles Times,

Buenor Hadjor, Another America: The

End

Press, 1995),

40. ness

May

P.

Wallace,

1982; Kofi

8,

Race and Blame (Boston: South

Politics of

105-6.

Manning Marable, Blackwater:

Historical Studies in Race, Class Conscious-

and Revolution (Dayton, Ohio: Black

Praxis Press, 1981), 129-32.

41. Ibid., 133-43. 42. Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege:

Urban America (Berkeley: 43.

I

244-45; Margot Henry,

Ibid.,

(Chicago: Banner Press, Boyette, "Let

Red Squads and

Police Repression in

'niversitv oi California Press, 1990), 243. "Attention,

This

New

Bum": The Philadelphia Tragedy (Chicago and

It

Is

America!"

105-26; Michael Boyette and Randi

55 72,

1987),

MOVE!:

York:

Con-

temporary Books, 1989), 14-24, 126-30. 134, 139, 144-50, 233-35; Hizkias Assefa and Paul Wahrhaftig, The

Move

Crisis in Philadelphia (Pittsburgh

sity Press,

1990); John Anderson and Hilary Hevenor, Burning

Move and

the Tragedy of Philadelphia

(New

Down

Univer-

the House:

York: Norton, 1987), 86-87, 93-99,

104, 108-37,249-50. 44.

Mike

and Class

Davis, Ci'ry of Quartz, 267-322;

in the

American Criminal

Dream

16-55; Clarence Lusane, Pipe (Boston: South Project

(New

End

York:

David Cole,

System

Blues:

(New

Press, 1999),

No

York:

Racism and

Marc Mauer, Race

Press, 1991);

New

Justice

Equal

New

L.

Race

War on Drugs

the

to Incarcerate:

142-61; Jimmie

Justice:

Press, 1999),

The Sentencing

Reeves and Richard

Campbell, Cracked Coverage: Television News, The Anti-cocaine Crusade, and the

Reagan Legacy (Durham, N.C.: Duke University

Press, 1994).

45. Davis, City of Quartz, 268. 46.

Diana R. Gordon, The

Citizens

(New

Brunswick,

lent critique of

Much

N.J.:

Rutgers University Press, 1990).

contemporary urban policing

America: Police and Prisons 47.

Justice Juggernaut: Fighting Street Crime, Controlling

in the

Age

of Crisis

has been written on the

rebellion in Los Angeles.

My

is

A

recent, excel-

Christian Parenti,

Lockdown

(London: Verso, 1999).

Rodney King beating and the subsequent

synopsis draws primarily on the following sources:

Slangin' Rocks

Mike

.

.

.

Palestinian Style

59

Davis, "In L.A., Burning All Illusions/' Nation 254, no. 21 (June

1,

1992):

743-46; L.A. Weekly, 14, no. 23 (May 8-14, 1992); Los Angeles Times, Understanding the Riots: Los Angeles before

and after the Rodney King Case (Los Angeles:

Los Angeles Times, 1992); Robert Gooding-Williams, Reading Urban Uprising

Why L.A. World

A

Call

(New York:

Reading Rodney King,

Happened: Implications of the '92 Los Angeles Rebellion (Chicago: Third

Press, 1993); Hadjor, to

ed.,

Routledge, 1993); Haki R. Madhubuti, ed.,

Reject the Federal

Labor/Community

Another America, 99-117; Urban Strategies Group,

Weed and Seed Program

Strategy Center, 1992);

Reconstructing Los Angeles from the Bottom

Strategy Center, 1993).

in

Los Angeles (Los Angeles:

Labor/Community

Up

Strategy Center,

(Los Angeles: Labor/Community

PERSECUTION OF NEGROES BY

Roughs and Policemen, of

New

in the City

York, August, 1900

Statement and Proofs Written and Compiled by Frank Moss and Issued by the Citizens' Protective League

It

might seem strange

to

some

to

include a

document from a hundred

years ago in a contemporary anthology on police brutality. Yet the

words from these Black

New

citizens brutalized

York City in August

1

900 have a powerful and

today In some ways, the testimony but

it is

by White mobs and police in

may

precisely this repetition of incidents

these voices

chilling resonance

at first appear overwhelming,

and

observations that gives

a stunning authority.

What follows

here are selections from

some of

the affidavits collected

from law-abiding and innocent men and women, both Black and White. These eyewitness accounts of police brutality, holding of what

is

essentially

to police brutality today.

were

a

official indifference,

people's tribunal eerily

Many

and

the

echo the responses

of those whose words are included here

are signed with an X.

reasonable

to

assume that many were also former slaves who had moved North

to

illiterate; their affidavits

search for opportunity

and

to

It is

escape the terrors of both slavery

vigilante tactics of the post-Reconstruction South.

6o

and

the

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

One must appreciate

the landscape of both the country

City at the time of this violence. According

61

and

New York

to the U.S. census, there

were

almost nine million African Americans living in the United States as the

became

nineteenth century

90 percent

population. Nearly slightly

the twentieth, or 11.6 percent of the entire

more than one-fourth

of Blacks

lived in the South,

still

and

urban areas of the South and the North.

in

T Washington B. Du Bois was

Up from

In 1900, Booker

published

London, W. E.

elected vice president of the first Pan-

Slavery, while in

African Congress. There were 115 recorded lynchings in the United States that year, yet the first bill to

make

lynching a federal crime, intro-

duced by Representative George H. White of North Carolina, the

last

African American elected during Reconstruction, never got out of congressional committee.

The writing had been on fact,

the wall for the three preceding decades. In

nothing underscored the loss of rights more than the case o/Plessy

v.

Ferguson, in 1896, in which the US. Supreme Court decided that the practice of "separate but equal" the mingling of the races. latest in

a

series of

But

the

was a

"reasonable" solution to prevent

Supreme Court decision was merely

laws that had

effectively created

the

a climate where

lynchings were not only condoned but encouraged in the last thirty-five

years of the nineteenth century. Although key events are too numerous

to

Ku Klux Klan

in

list

here,

one might

briefly

mention the creation of the

1865, the dissolution by Congress of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1872,

which had been established

to

assure fair treatment of African Ameri-

cans after the Civil War, and the brokered presidential election of Rutherford B. state

Hayes

in 1876,

which resulted in renewed southern control of

governments without federal

Reconstruction.

By 1898,

Court would rule

in

late the Fourteenth

That the

riots

it

Williams

interference, as well as the

was hardly v.

surprising that the

Supreme

Mississippi that the poll tax did not vio-

Amendment.

described in this chapter occurred in

the fact that conditions were different in the

What we know

end of

of the cause of the riot

left

his wife to

buy a

York

North but hardly

the following:

is

1900, Arthur Harris and his wife were at

Avenue, when Harris

New

better.

on August

Forty-first Street

cigar.

reflects

and

12,

Eighth

While she was standing

d

62

alone

Citizens' Protective

and waiting for her husband

named Robert J. Thorpe attempted

man

to

to return,

a plainclothes police

officer

Mrs. Harris for "solicitation."

to arrest

wife

away and

rescue her. Thorpe struck Harris with a club,

and Harris

Harris saw a attempted

League

clothing taking his

civilian

in

responded by stabbing Thorpe with a penknife and fled the scene. Thorpe died of his wounds,

the hots, led

by police

officers

and mobs

of White

began on August 15, the day of Thorpe's funeral.

citizens,

One month

later,

Carnegie Hall

ernment formal

and

to

on September 12, some 3,500 people convened at

protest police brutality

to

act on behalf of all of

collection of eighty

and

Out

its citizens.

pages of sworn

the failure of the city gov-

of this meeting

affidaints,

came

the

some of which are

New

excerpted here. They stand as a record of the events that occurred in

York City on August 15 and 16, 1900.

City

and County

of New York,

ss.:

John Hains, being duly sworn, deposes and I

West 36th

reside at No. 341

present employed as

evening of August 15, 1900,

About two beating

in

said that

am

to

bed

North

as usual at

them

I

When

I

I

On

at

the

9:30 o'clock.

awoke,

I

found

six

They asked me

had been shooting out of the

did not have a revolver.

me

he had seen

River.

was awakened by somebody

I

a club.

with which they said

am

and

a laborer,

the room; they had broken in the door.

told

I

went

on the back with

for the revolver

window.

I

I

at Pier 16,

o'clock in the morning

me

policemen

Street.

longshoreman

a

says:

One

of the officers

shoot out of the window. Three officers

then began to club me, while the other three were searching the house.

They found an

old toy revolver, which was broken and not

had been loaded, and

loaded, and could not shoot

if it

was the

pistol

denied

dragged

me

tion house.

I

I

had used.

I

that,

which was the

out of the house, and proceeded to take

was only

in

my undershirt, being

my

cers said, "You'll

shoes.

be d

They only sneered

—d lucky

if

truth.

me

They

to the sta-

asleep at the time they

broke into the house, and begged them to allow trousers and

said that that

at this,

you get there

me

to put

and one of the alive."

my

on

offi-

Here another

of the officers pulled out a revolver and said, "Let's shoot the d

—

d

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

nigger," to

a

b

which

a third officer replied,

"We can

— to the station house

63

take the black son of

as he is." When got to the station house, my head and other parts of my body, as a result of

was bleeding from

I

these clubbings. There were only

ments that evening

I

two other persons

—William Seymour, from whom

ments, and Walter Gregory.

When

our apart-

in

my

rent

I

apart-

they saw the officers running into

me

the house, acting as they did, they ran out of the house, leaving

They did not shoot out of the window, and we never kept any

asleep.

weapons saw the

in the house. Mrs. officers beat

and saw no I

on the

blotter,

me. She was

Jones,

who

in the

house during

from our windows. Her

firing

When

Lucy

lives

affidavit

next door to

was placed

in a cell. Before this

I

this time,

all

hereto annexed.

is

had been made

arrived at the station house, after the entry I

us,

was struck by one

of the officers in the station house in front of the sergeant's desk, and

without any interference on

in his presence,

placed in the

my

somebody

cell

(I

one of the

officers

who

me

struck

the charge against me; he charged

window.

was

so.

I

I

police loaned

a pair of old

and abused me,

him

told

it

was

me with

firing a pistol

me

officer.

I

many

I

I

another officer

you

a

is

d

who was

me

to the Penitentiary

We

had

six stitches

said, "I will

put into

there ten days,

I

I

my

released,

I

head by

is

was taken to Blackwell's

was

of

one of the

teach you d

will kill half of you."

building in which the Magistrates' Court

This was before

him

false charges

station house,

sheet which was on the bed on the night in question. I

if this

clubbing me, "Club as hard as

—d hard head." Another

niggers to club white people.

stains.

me

did not have a lawyer to repre-

was being taken to the

officers said to

blood

through the

similar cases before

was given no opportunity to deny the

While

can; this

and sent

a great

that day, and he was very impatient. sent me, and

made

and endeavored to explain matters to

not,

There were

for six months.

Ohm,

as aforesaid,

was brought before the magistrate, and he asked

him, but he would not listen to

the

me

could be taken to the Police Court. Officer

I

was

I

believe the police surgeon) bandaged

The next morning the

head.

trousers, so that

his part. After

a

I

It

—

have the is

surgeon

full

at

of

the

located on 54th Street. Island. After

I

had been

do not know the reason why. Sen-

64

League

Citizens' Protective

tenced August 16, released August 25, about eight A.M. The only one of the officers

could recognize

I

mal complaint

insensibility that night,

summer

I

Howard,

and

was employed at his

all

Ohm, who made

Officer

recommendation from him.

my

into

of the officers were in uniform. Last

in Burlington,

am

I

the for-

was almost beaten

I

by General O. O.

for the season as a butler

summer home

arrested before in

is

the Magistrates' Court.

in

Vermont, and

have

I

a

not a drinking man, and never was

life.

JOHN HAINS.

me this 28th day of August, 1900. Geo. P. Hammond Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County. Sworn

City

to before

of New York,

and County

ss.:

Chester Smith, being duly sworn, deposes and reside at No.

I

drug

store, at

Street.

months.

my

while going to

composed mostly of said,

On

August

"There

a nigger!"

is

a brick at

of the policemen his club.

My

eye and

Eighth Avenue.

One

Streets,

I

saw

pointing at me. I

was

my

to

me

me

in

and struck

forehead are at

"No, lifted

sir,

me

I

the

of the policemen

danger

I

ran

away

the back, and then one

me

in the left

eye with I

the southeast corner of 39th Street and

as

I

reached

said to the officer as

I

from the ground and threw

me

glass in the

it I

mob had

me to

dispersed.

saw that they were

I

still

started back into the saloon,

kill

The

in

lacerated and discolored.

still

can't go out there; they'll

into the street.

Some one

of the policemen ran in after me, and told

toward the door, and I

side of Eighth

crowd of people,

One

go outside and run towards Broadway; that the

waiting outside.

about ten o'clock

a

in physical

me, which struck

came up

then ran into the saloon

started

in Flannery's

39th Street on Eighth Avenue. Some-

place, going north to

body threw

15, 1900, at

police officers and children.

ran towards me, and seeing that

from the

says:

am employed

home, walking on the west

Avenue between 38th and 39th crowd

I

No. 103 West 42nd Street, and have been so employed

for the last ten P.M.,

320 West 37th

me."

The policeman then

through the swinging door

door was broken, and

hands and knees. The policemen and the

mob

I

fell

on

my

then began beating

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

me, the policemen beating the crowd or protect

65

me with their clubs. They did not disperse

me from it.

then started to run towards Broad-

I

me

way; another policeman ran after

and struck

me

in the

back with

made one or two jumps, and fell in front of No. 236 West 39th Street. The lady of the house, a white woman, came out, and I was taken into the house by someone, I don't know whom. his club.

Two

staggered,

I

or three days after she told

they would not leave she would

word

senger boy and sent

brought some bandages,

two

to

refused.

He

work

and that she told them that

them. The lady rang for

employer to

them

to take

me

call.

my head. me to the

mes-

a

He came and He then called station house.

and took

finally yielded

was treated there by

I

employer remained with did not

my

and they

insisted,

the station house.

kill

and bandaged

etc.,

police officers and asked

They

that the officers soon left the

mob tried to break in,

house, but that the if

me

me

a police surgeon.

to

My

until three o'clock the next morning.

for three days after this.

I

saw one man treated very

harshly at the station house, being clubbed by police officers, and believe he

would have been treated

the presence of reporters.

I

for the presence of

worse

if it

had not been

I

for

did nothing whatever to justify this brutal

treatment on the part of the police

been

still

I

believe that had

it

not

my employer would have been beaten

still

officers.

I

I

more. There were over twenty-five policemen in the crowd.

unconscious part of the time.

I

have never been arrested

in

I

was

my life.

Chester Smith

me this 5th day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND JR., Notary Public (164), NY. County. Sworn

City

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Charles Bennett, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I

reside at No.

working for

Coney 16),

man named

a

Island.

309 West 37th

I

quit

and started for

work

home

at

Street.

On

Mr. O'Connor,

August

who

15, 1900,

keeps

a

I

was

saloon at

one o'clock A.M. the next day (August

with

a

man named Wilson. We boarded

an

Eighth Avenue car at Warren Street and Broadway which was going north; just before

we

reached the street whereon

I

reside, the con-

66

we were

ductor of the car upon which

been

a riot, that

League

Citizens' Protective

was because of the death of the police

it

had

riding told us that there officer,

that they were attacking every colored man that they caught.

and

then

I

we had better get off; the conductor then said that it was quiet" when he came down. We got off the car at Eighth

said that

"pretty

Avenue and 37th

and

Street,

my home when

front door of

group of about

several police officers

told them,

"Home

here."

ately after

making

my

me down.

I

to

asking

I

I

my

the corner of Eighth Avenue and 36th Street. the time, and they threw

my

water; they kept

head

me in

the water until

while they called

me

all

way

the

my

arrival there

I

told Captain

I

remained

and while there

Cooney

in the station

heard

I

I

a

I

heard

among as

this

you

man

stick to us?"

called

the colored

bad condition

as

same

He

they

Upon my

had received. While

that

I

in

had been clubbed by

dressed in citizen's clothes

as

—d

was."

I

nigger

Thompson by some present

you

I'll

stand by you."

of the officers.

and who were

was, asking their names,

see; kill

The man answered,

answered, "Yes,

men who were I

when

again into the gutter.

house for about half an hour,

man who was

them; shoot them; be brave, the

of rain

was covered with blood I

say to the officers present, "Club every d

"All right; will

full

to the station house in 37th Street.

and bruises from the beating and clubbing

policemen.

again at

wagon, into which they threw me,

a patrol

head had been cut open;

the station house

strangled,

I

After

and beat

which was

into the gutter,

jumped on me, and pushed me back

down

was raining very hard

It

let up,

a

I

and endeavored to run towards 8th

feet

Avenue, but was pursued by the officers and knocked

at

a

was then

reply an

struggled to

me

from among

me where was going. in front of my door, and immediofficer hit me with his club, knocking

dozen called

a

3:30 A.M. had almost reached the

at

He went in

almost

where they had

lived,

and what they had been doing. After receiving their answers, he said to each of

them, "Get

ter

h

—

1

home

have killed yerl" When he came to told him; then he said,

from work a

d

at

Coney

me

out of here; they'd ought ter

he

said,

"What's your name?"

"What were you doing?"

Island."

He

I

said, "I just

I

come

exclaimed, "Coney Island, eh! That's

—d nice place to be working. Where

do you

live?"

I

told him,

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

when he

said,

my district, the worst me to get out, but I was

"Another nice place right in

block in the whole

district."

He

did not

tell

shortly after taken to Roosevelt Hospital and

Hospital,

where

I

remained

a

week,

Court, where

I

1900. While

was being clubbed

said,

I

67

had

a hearing

from there to Bellevue

when I was

taken to 54th Street

and was discharged on August 28, one of the

in the street,

officers

"Search him," whereupon they stopped the clubbing long

enough to search me, which

I

had

money

the said

my pockets and take fourteen dollars in bills from in my hip pocket of my trousers. have never had I

returned to me. While

I

was

in the station house,

Captain Cooney was there, but not in uniform, and the aforesaid

man whom

they called

Thompson was

the presence of Captain Cooney.

home on

At the time

that

I

men,

had reached

in

my

the said night there was no disturbance in the neighbor-

hood, and there was but one

by the

giving orders to the

officers.

man

in sight,

and he was chased away

Everything was quiet in the neighborhood, and on the

way uptown on the car I saw no signs of a disturbance, and would not have known anything about there having been anything of the kind

if

I

had not been informed by the car conductor.

two of the

officers

who

dressed in citizen's clothes, and who,

men

I

can identify

took part in the clubbing, one of I

think,

whom

was

was one of the ward-

attached to that precinct. (The witness subsequently identified

Officer

Herman Ohm.) Deponent

in the City of

further states that he has resided

New York for the past fifteen years,

arrested before in his

life,

and has always been

and has never been

a quiet, law-abiding

citizen.

his

CHARLES

x

BENNETT.

mark

me this 31st day of August, 1900. Geo. P. Hammond Jr., Notary Public (164), NY. County. Sworn

City

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Statement of Paul Leitenberger and Alfred 105 East 22nd Street:

E.

Borman

(white), of

68

On

Citizens' Protective

August 15 we were on 28th

walking up Seventh Avenue, and

down about went

ten P.M.

Dore

into the

We

at

League

and were going home,

Street,

29th Street

crowd was coming

a

followed the crowd up 35th Street, and

and

(a dive),

"Give us

yelled,

a

coon and we'll

He

lynch him! "They then went to Corbett's on Broadway.

man working

ored

Then the

for him.

came with

police

it

has

a col-

their clubs

and dispersed the crowd, which went up Broadway.

A

cable car was

coming downtown, and someone

a

nigger; lynch

him!" and several white standing in the

The

blows.

car

men jumped on

and with

car,

cried, "There's

the

man was

cane or umbrella warded off the

a

stop.

Some

and the crowd pulled him

a

oft,

it,

men were thrown

off

Negro on the second

car

of the

of the car and nearly run over. There was that,

colored

went on with him; the gripman would not stop

though they called on him to

behind

A

car.

man

and the

escaped by

running into the Marlborough Hotel, where he was sheltered. There

were no policemen present

these times, but

at

some policemen

mob moved up Broadway to about 41st Street, and the Vendome Hotel. Some got in, and one cried out,

appeared and the tried to get into

"Give us the coon!" The police coming up, they

up

as far as the

Hotel Cadillac

at

colored hall man, and an officer

Other

officers

43rd

Street,

and went

came up and clubbed

came and the crowd

We

scattered.

and the police kept the people moving. Street to Eighth Avenue, and

moved on and went

We

in to get the

right

waited

and

left.

a half hour,

walked through 42nd

saw more of the

rioters,

and several

policemen would not allow them to make any disturbance, and the rioters spread,

Negroes.

ond

We

night.

breaking up.

The whole aim of the

saw Devery the

He was

police generally

in

first

command.

made no

night.

We

We

rioters

didn't see

observed the

first

effort to disperse the crowds,

was to catch

him the

sec-

night that the

but ran along

with them. The only places where they attacked the crowds were Corbett's and the Cadillac.

The

disturbing element were

lows, such as frequent "Hell's Kitchen." at

We

young

at

fel-

talked with a ringleader

the northeast corner of 28th Street and Eighth Avenue, a few

nights after.

again

He

said

he had been

a leader in the riots

—that the "niggers" must be treated the same

and would do as

down

it

South.

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

At the

Cadillac there was an officer

who

69

did splendid

work

in dis-

persing the crowd. For a while he was alone, and he clubbed the

crowd

indiscriminately; in a

little

helped him, and those three

and when they were

men

they wanted

when

ejected the

mob

the hotel,

appeared and effec-

showed what could be done when

They protected the

to.

the

mob from

in the street other officers

tually dispersed the crowd. This

bett's,

while two other officers came and

hotel in good shape, also Cor-

tried to get in.

PAUL LEITENBERGER.

Alfred

Sworn

to before

me this

FRANK MOSS, Notary and County

City

Solomon I

Public,

of New York,

NY. County.

ss.:

reside at No.

129 West 27th P.M.,

I

left

left

on Thursday, August

Street;

I

met

of mine, with

and returned down Seventh Avenue towards 27th

had got within about one hundred struck by a missile

feet of

thrown by an

27th

and had got about

Street,

when

menced

fifty feet east

when

around

my

clothes as

if in

"Do you

see

it

me

said,

"What

are

I

was

passed on, how-

me com-

search of something.

you doing with

doing anything with

I

me, and seizing

an ordinary pocket knife in the change pocket of officer finding

when

and

naturally turned

I

for.

Street,

of Seventh Avenue, on 27th

a police officer ran after

feeling

Street,

Italian boy.

around and asked him what he had done that ever,

a friend

stood and chatted for about three-quarters of an hour,

I

16,

the house and walked to the corner of

Seventh Avenue and 28th Street, where

I

Borman.

Russell Wright, being duly sworn, deposes and says:

1900, about 6:30

whom

E.

13th day of September, 1900.

it?"

He

my

coat,

this?"

I

then took

I

had

and the

answered,

me

to the

30th Street station house (19th Precinct), and while going up the steps of the station house

I

stumbled, and the officer then

the back of the neck with his club.

I

hit

me

on

was arraigned before the

who took my pedigree, and at the close of that proceeding the officer who had me in charge, and whose name is Kennedy said to the sergeant, "What will we do with this feller?" The sergeant sergeant,

— 70

Citizens' Protective

League

b V The said officer then brought when we reached a flight of stairs leading down to the cells he shoved me down the whole flight; when reached the bottom some other officers who were down there grabbed me and replied, "Kill the black son of a

me

back, and

I

me

punched and beat

with their

and charged with carrying days.

I

fists.

a knife,

served part of the time,

and

when

I

was arraigned the next day

I

I

was committed

was released on

and had never been arrested before

intoxicated,

bail.

my

in

for ninety I

life.

was not I

never

have and do not stand around the corners of the neighborhood; and further,

am employed by

I

the Standard Oil

Company as a porter. Solomon R. Wright.

me this 22nd day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County. Sworn

City

to before

of New York,

and County

ss.:

Robert Myrick, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he resides at

414 West 39th

and

Street,

saloon keeper at 49th

Street

is

employed by Bernard Brennan,

and Broadway; that on Thursday

evening, August 16, at about eight

P.M.,

he

left his

work

at

the said

Avenue between 47th and 48th

Streets;

that he entered a restaurant on that block, and after eating a

meal he

saloon and walked to Eighth

downtown

asked the proprietor whether there was any trouble tonight.

He

replied, "No,

had better take

a car

it is

kind of quiet tonight, but

and ride down,

it

will

be

safer."

I

He

guess you replied,

"I

guess that will be the best way," and then walked out onto the

avenue and boarded

42nd

Street

when

a

a car

mob

bound downtown, and had gone

as far as

of about one hundred boys, none of whom

apparently were over nineteen years of age, began to throw stones at the car and

woman on

yell,

"There's a nigger in the car;

the car said,

"Come

went along the footboard from the

killed."

where

had been, and got under the

I

see me; but the

mob

him!"

seat,

rear of the car,

where the mob could not

continued following the car and stoned

reached 39th Street, where

I

Some

over here, mister; don't stand there

and get

I

let's kill

wanted to get

off,

it

until

I

but was advised there

by three men (who were the only passengers that had remained on

— Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

the car) not to get

when

Street,

off. I

71

continued on until the car reached 38th

the car stopped and the

mob

caught up with

then

it. I

got off the east side of the car and ran over to the southeast corner of ;

Eighth Avenue, to where

one

I

live?"

street at this

He

told him.

I

me where

gun or

a

to search me,

a razor?"

He then took the

I

you

"What

I

me

for protection,

I

said, "I

having a razor in a case in

my pocket,

his club, said,

and

is

what

was then taken to the 37th Street

was kicked by and when 13,

and

I

in the

morning

I

sation with a colored

he could not place.

it

me man who

loose.

While

Deponent

up.

it

in

my cell

a streetcar

was.

across the

"I

b V and come over

said,

"Shut up!"

a

and while there

I

by the doorman,

was locked

I

a porter for

is

in cell

I

No.

court,

got into conver-

the N.Y.C.&H.R.R.,

and clubbed by police

further states that he had the aforementioned

to a barber to see

he was taking

fix it

my out-

was brought to the 54th Street police

by reason of the

razor in his pocket

he had taken

He then

station house,

and he said that he was dragged from

Deponent

me

said to him,

get."

was told to shut

I

where the judge turned

officers.

I

I

the officers in the section room, and

protested

"Where

showed him where and, striking

"You black son of

on the head.

this

said,

you doing on the

home from work." I told him. He then said, "Have have neither." He then proceeded

worked.

several times

are

answered, "Going

I

razor out of

back of the neck with

to

me home?" He

said,

told the officer and

I

and going up to

standing,

then

when I remembered

side coat pocket, and

then struck

He

men

five

please see

time of night?"

then asked

you got

saw

you

said, "Officer, will

do you

I

fact that

if it

it

he could to his

needed

fix

home

it,

repairing,

and

and finding that

to lay

it

away

says further that the time of the clubbing

in

its

was about

8:30 P.M.

ROBERT MYRICK.

me this 1st day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), NY. County. Sworn

City

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Adolphus Cooks, being duly sworn, deposes and I

reside at No.

243 West 32nd

Street,

says:

and work

for the

Anchor

— Citizens' Protective

72

Steamship Company, foot of West 24th

On

Tuesday morning, August

League

longshoreman.

Street, as a

work

for the said

that night, and until

Wednesday

14, 1900,

I

went

to

company, worked

all

night at 10:30 P.M.

— 39!^ consecutive hours. At the said hour

that day,

all

I

left

the pier at the foot of West 24th Street, and walked east on 24th Street,

and when

and 24th Street Avenue, did not

reached the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue

I

me

white gentleman advised

a

not to go up Eighth

there was a riot up there and they were fighting "like he

as

know

what."

continued east on 24th Street until

I

I

reached

when

the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 24th Street,

met another white man, who advised me not Avenue,

as there

was

a riot in progress,

I

up Seventh

to go

and that they were fighting

at

that time in the neighborhood of 41st Street and 37th Street, but,

thinking that get

down

I

home

could get

to that street,

started

I

32nd

in

Street before the riot could

uptown on the west

side of

Seventh

Avenue, and had reached the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue

and 28th Avenue.

Street,

In the

when

I

saw three

officers

coming down Seventh

whom

meantime three other colored men,

did not

I

know, had caught up with me, and were walking behind me.

had

I

gone about one hundred feet north of the aforesaid corner when

saw the three

officers

break into

a

run

in

our direction.

I

who had me body with

us and overtook

soon

as

I

I

officer

me

on the

then between the blows he

his club;

my arm

blow that

them and clubbed them; the

immediately, without saying a word, struck

you black son of a b threw up

was grabbed

men who had

by one of them, while the other two chased the three

come behind

V One in

it

said,

"Get out of here,

of the blows he aimed at

and received the blow on

was lame

for quite

some

it.

days.

could, and ran to 28th Street, and

I

It

my head, but

was such

night in fear of

my

life.

The

officer followed

front stoop, and drove

them

into the house.

a small place that led into the cellar of

I

stayed

when who were on

During the heavy

storm Wednesday night and early Thursday morning

I

as

Street to No.

me, and

into the hallway he clubbed the colored people

I

a severe

escaped from him

down 28th

211.1 ran into the hallway and out into the back yard, where all

I

I

ran

the

rain-

took refuge

in

the said house. Thursday

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

morning about

six o'clock

at the foot of West

24th

I

73

ventured out and went towards the dock

where

Street,

I

intended to go to work again,

and had reached Eighth Avenue between 25th and 26th

when I saw two

on the opposite

police officers

Streets,

side of the street,

one

of whom started to run towards me, but his companion stopped him,

and drew him back. Deponent interfered with

such

and clubbed by the police

home

reached his

in safety,

that deponent

was watching

about to

a

him

by reason of

also declares that

month before the

same

said clubbing, the

home, where he lived

his

having

he can identify the

clubbed him; that he knows him by

at his

he could have

signs of a disturbance,

he could see up the avenue;

for such signs

been warned twice. Deponent

who

as far as

he had not been

officer

and that he saw no

crowd of people,

as a large

officer

states further that if

at that time, in

and

sight,

that,

had come

officer

West 28th

Street,

and had told him that the roundsman had got him, and that he had given

him

as

an excuse that he was at the house where deponent

then lived and was quelling a disturbance there, and asked deponent to verify that statement if the

roundsman asked him. Deponent promised

so to do, notwithstanding the fact that nothing of the kind

had

occurred there, and promised to do so simply to get the officer out of trouble.

That the

to the 20th Precinct. sober,

name

officer's first

Deponent

upon

and that he

"Joe,"

is

attached

further declares that he was perfectly

and that the assault by the

outrage

is

officer

was unwarranted and an

a peaceable citizen. his

Adolphus

x

Cooks.

mark Sworn GEO.

City P. I

P.

me this 4th day of September, 1900. HAMMOND JR., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County.

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

A. Johnson, M.D., being duly sworn, deposes and reside at

practice of

203 West 33rd

my

Street,

and

am

profession at that address.

says:

engaged

On

in the active

Thursday morning,

Citizens' Protective

74

August

about ten A.M.,

16, 1900,

going to the

window saw I

a

on the opposite side of the

flats

in,

menced

again and

The

He

one of the

and went

failed,

east to

Gallagher, and entered. After he

Seventh Avenue. At the saloon they com-

him

to shout, "Bring

went

rioters

the street, and

a noise in

trying to get into

noticed three policemen in the saloon. Almost immedi-

I

mob came down

ately a

man

street.

man

the corner saloon, kept by a

went

heard

I

colored

League

formed

out, we'll lynch him!" Several of the

and

into the saloon,

few minutes they came out

in a

waiting for something.

in a semicircle, evidently

police officers appeared with the colored

unmercifully. get through

They then shoved him

them and

ran

down

man, clubbing him

mob.

into the

the street, and

I

He managed

heard him shortly

shouting for mercy, saying, "For God's sake don't

me,

kill

have

I

wife and children." Deponent has been informed that two of the

down

cers ran

him and knocked him

the street after

to

a

offi-

senseless.

P.A.JOHNSON.

Sworn Geo.

City

me this 10th day of September, 1900. Hammond Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County.

to before

P.

of New York,

and County

ss.:

Stephen Small, being duly sworn, deposes and I

Avenue and 34th

reside at the northwest corner of Seventh

Street.

of

says:

On Wednesday

a sick

evening, August 15, 1900,

I

went

to the

home

brother on Lexington Avenue, and started then to go to

my

lodge on 29th Street near Seventh Avenue, and had reached Eighth

Avenue and 41st

jumped on the other struck

me

Street, opposite Driggs' saloon,

in

the police desisted. further the

mob

hit

I

stayed on the

in

it,

avenue.

I

it

car,

A white man

and when

officers

which

I

to scream, did,

and

interfered,

we had gone

and attacked me. The

who began

to get under the seat,

Relief,

me

the eye with his club.

boarded

number of women

me

One

car.

when two

on the head with his club, and the and

a little

car had quite a

and some of them told

it

proceeded down the

reached the neighborhood of Hudson Street House of

where the white gentleman who

instance took me, and

where

I

had

interfered

my head bandaged.

I

in

the

first

could not get

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

home

that evening, and

remained

I

30th Street between

in a cellar in

The next morning

Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

75

I

home,

started to get

and had reached the corner of 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue,

when

I

going,

and what weapon

He

was stopped by an

said,

"You look

as if

I

officer

who wanted

had on me.

I

in the scrap.

have killed you; get out of here." As he said the back with his club, and

I

am

yet

know where

this

was

They ought

to

me across on my back

he struck

unable to lay

without suffering extreme pain. Deponent further

flat

he was

states that

and was not creating any disturbance, and that the

perfectly sober assault

I

him I had nothing on me.

told

you had been

to

by the police

officers

was

entirely unjustified

and an outrage. his

Stephen x Small.

mark

me this 1 1th day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), NY. County. Sworn

City

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

William Hamer, of No. 494 Seventh Avenue, being duly sworn, deposes and I

says:

am a musician. I am employed at "The Fair," kept by Mr.

My

on 14th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues.

employed there P.M.

I

also.

On August

15

1

wife

about

1 1

is

:30

took the crosstown 14th Street car and changed to the Seventh

Avenue horse

cars.

I

had not heard anything of the

stopped between 36th and 37th

stones.

I

me

me in the

stomach, and

in there

and I

left

fell

my

lads

The

car

I

were

armed with

sticks

wife and

me

for dead.

lumber yard and

lay there in

Dr. Yarnell, of Park car,

I

I

am

I

crawled out of the stable into

my blood until

the doctor's care ever since, and

pulled out of the

A stone or something hit My wife and were

into a water trough.

separated, and she did not find me.

is

men and

riot.

ran into a stable at 37th Street and Seventh Avenue, and

they beat

doctor

and

Streets,

dragged from the car by a crowd of

and

my work

finished

Samuels,

three A.M.

out today for the

Avenue near 84th

noticed a colored

man

I

have been

first

Street.

I

in

My

time.

When

a

was

lying unconscious

on

Citizens' Protective

76

League

the ground. There were at least a dozen policemen standing around.

They did

nothing, and

made no

effort to protect

me.

WILLIAM HAMER.

Sworn

to before

me

this 31st

FRANK MOSS, Notary

City

Public,

of New York,

and County

day of August, 1900.

NY. County.

ss.:

Mrs. Annie Hamer, being duly sworn, deposes and says that she

494 Seventh Avenue; that she

resides at

"The

Fair," in

is

employed

as a

about midnight thereof, she

in

company with her husband

Seventh Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets on

Avenue

car; that

surrounded by with

a brick,

musician

at

East 14th Street; that on Wednesday, August 15, 1900,

a

when

a

arrived at

Seventh

she alighted from the car she found herself

mob, and almost instantly was struck

thrown by someone

whom

in

the

mouth

she does not know. She

became separated from her husband, and did not know what

became of him

home

until three a.m. the next

when he came

morning,

covered with blood. Deponent states further that she has

all

read the affidavit of her husband, hereto attached, and

own knowledge

that the facts therein stated are true.

ther states that she has been informed by her

let

anyone

in or out,

Deponent

fur-

mother that the "cap-

door of her residence, and told them to

tain" stationed officers at the

"not

knows of her

and

if

anyone attempted

it

to shoot them."

Annie Hamer.

Sworn Geo.

City

me this 6th day of September, Hammond Jr., Notary Public (164), NY.

to before

P.

and County

W

Walter

of New York,

1

900.

County.

ss.:

Coulter (white), 481

Seventh Avenue, being duly

sworn, deposes and says that on Wednesday evening, August 15, 1900, there was quite a disturbance around his place of business, and at

about

1 1

:30 P.M. he

saw

a

number of officers and men

in citizen's

clothes go into the houses 481 and 483, and he, thinking they

part of the

quite

tall

crowd of roughs, stepped up

to a police officer,

were

who was

and stout and of reddish complexion, and said to him,

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

"Why do you

77

allow those rowdies to go up into that house? There

no one except

women

a lot of respectable

possibly one man."

The

own

and mind your

in there,

respectability, us."

and you

Deponent

that, in fact,

will

have enough to do;

further states that

they could not get a brick,

looking for one a short while before that to do

some

tify if

was the

he sees him

colored

man

fact that a large, tall

again,

in the

man,

whom

he was

their going

he can iden-

came along Seventh Avenue, and

window

no brick

as

repairing with,

and could not find one; that the only apparent reason for into the house

and

police officer replied as follows: "You go on

they just shied a brick at

had been thrown;

and children

is

seeing this

called out, "There's a big nigger; get

made

him!" and immediately there was a rush

for the house.

Depo-

nent states further that the police knew there were none but respect-

had gone to

able people in that house, as deponent

trouble to get rid of a lot of dissolute people

about

and

a year ago,

upon the

in his

a great deal of

who were

in the

house

endeavors to get rid of them had called

police to aid him, so that they

were perfectly cognizant of

the facts in the case.

Walter W. Coulter. Sworn GEO.

City

P.

me this 31st day of August, 1900. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County.

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Mrs. Elizabeth Mitchell, being duly sworn, deposes and says that

she resides at 481 Seventh Avenue; that on Wednesday evening,

August

15, 1900,

about 11:30

P.M.,

two

police officers in citizen's

clothes and one in citizen's dress broke in the door of her apartments

claiming to be looking for "the

man

that threw the bottle." She

answered and said that "no bottle was thrown," and that

shame sister,

for

them

Mrs. Kate Jackson,

ing that the

of the

life

became frightened

at

of her children and herself was

window

endangering the

it

was

a

to break in the door of respectable people; that her

the uproar, and thinkin danger,

jumped out

with her three-year-old child in her arms, thereby life

is

now

at six

a.m.

of herself and child, and in consequence

confined to her bed with shock,

fright,

and

bruises.

That

78

League

Citizens' Protective

the next morning she saw

man and woman

colored

a

assaulted on

the corner of 36th Street and Seventh Avenue. Also at 52nd Street

and Seventh Avenue, between eleven and twelve A.M., she saw

man

ored

assaulted by a white

and

to interfere

arrest the

him

bles refused to allow

the officers' the

man

first

man, and when the

man

white

name was

attempted

motormen around the

the

to arrest him.

officer

a col-

She

states further that

"Jim," as she heard

him

sta-

one of

so addressed

by

in citizen's clothes.

Mrs. Elizabeth Mitchell.

me this 31st day of August, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND JR, Notary Public (164), N.Y. County. Sworn

to before

and County

City

of New York,

ss.:

Mrs. Margaret Taylor, being duly sworn, deposes and says: reside at

I

339 West 36th

about two A.M., while lying on house, ers.

I

was aroused by hearing

went

I

a curse,

to the

"Get your head

One imbedded

through lodger

a glass

sounds

named Floyd of a

as

my

roof, past

the

in

the street shouted with

shoot

I'll

some of the in

room of my

shot fired, followed by several oth-

in there or

itself

the front

in

off."

it

I

withdrew

my

shots had entered

door,

win-

and another passed

ceiling,

Wallace.

I

awoke the

firing into the

said Wallace,

windows. Shortly

number of people coming down the and stopping on the

door,

floor

and then

I

form, six in number.

after

I

if

from the

below me.

In a very

open

officers in full uni-

knew who

I

heard

stairs

saw that they were police

They asked me

fired the shots.

Then they asked me

me

I

lied.

there were any guns in the house, and

I

answered no; whereupon

said

I

did not know.

was again told that for them,"

They then

I

lied.

I

told

then

said, "All right,

which they proceeded to

room, and broke into husband's and

a closet in

my own

do.

I

if I

go ahead and search

They went from room

the front room, which contained

clothes; they then

a

and told him

short while they returned, and without asking to be let in broke

my

my

door leading into an inner room, and occupied by

someone was

that

lounge

a a

Thursday, August 16, 1900,

window, when someone

head, and then realized that

dows.

On

Street.

opened

to

my

a small satchel in

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

my

which was in bills

pocketbook. In the said pocketbook

and one

and seventy-five cents

dollar

men were making

the

79

had

I

in silver.

six dollars

While part of

the search, the others seized the aforesaid

Wallace and took him out into the hallway where deponent has been

on the wrist and

told they clubbed the said Wallace

came

in, after

the officers

were bruised and

left,

deponent saw that

his wrist swollen.

Deponent

which were shot

belief that the bullets

declares

into her

When

face.

he

and cheek

his face

to be her

it

room (one

of which

she has) could not have been fired from the street, but must have

come from the houses opposite. Further, that when the officers left she remembered having left her pocketbook in the aforesaid satchel, and immediately ran into the front room to see found that the belief that the

six dollars in bills

search.

was

was gone, and declares

same was taken by the three

room making the

if it

Deponent

officers

it

safe;

to be her

who were in the when her hus-

further states that

band returned on the following Saturday she told him of the the police officers.

He

amounting to about

my

without to

visit

of

then searched in the closet for some money,

which he

sixty dollars,

knowledge, and could not find

be her belief that

she

this

money was

stated to have left there it.

also taken

Deponent

declares

by the police

it

officers

aforementioned. Deponent further declares that there were no shots fired

any

from her apartments, and that no one therein had

a firearm of

sort.

Maggie Taylor.

me this 7th day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County. Sworn

City

and County

John I

to before

L.

of New York,

Newman,

being duly sworn, deposes and

reside at No. 351

15, 1900,

I

went

ss.:

West 37th

to the restaurant

which

supper. This was about 10:30 P.M. After utes

some one

told

me

that the

says:

Street, in the rear house.

I

is

in the front building for

had been there

mob was

On August

coming.

I

a

few min-

had seen them

beat colored people during the morning without any cause, so

walked out of the restaurant into

my

apartments, which are

in

I

the

80

Citizens' Protective

only a few steps away;

rear,

avoid any trouble.

as to

closed

As

live in

I

I

my

him!"

The

in,

said,

"Here

is

d

a

—d

nigger;

me with their clubs until me to the station house. but my friends tell me that the

all

this time,

me

all

the

were beating

one block west from where

way live.

I

I

carried

was unconscious during

I

and kicked open the

four officers then beat

became unconscious. They then police

did this so

I

apartments. Four officers

said, "Stop!"

Then one of them grabbed me and

door.

floor.

reached the front door and walked

immediately came, and one of them

kill

the basement

and proceeded to go into

it

League

I

to the station house.

At the

It is

house

station

I

located

recovered

my consciousness. was arraigned before the sergeant, and the officer who struck me first made the complaint against me. At the sergeant's desk felt very weak, bleeding from my head and eye, and held on to the railing for support. One of the officers struck me in the ribs I

I

with

I

night stick, and said,

a

ward on the

"God d

sergeant's desk,

and

— n you, stand up there!"

I

said, "For

God's

I

fell for-

sake, take a

gun

my brains! If you have got to take a life, take mine, and murder me this way! "The sergeant then said very gruffly to the

and blow out don't

officer,

"Take him away!" While

Devery was to

in

somebody

fere,

I

this

was going on, Chief of Police

the station house standing about ten feet away, talking

whom

I

did not know.

conversing with the

going on.

all

man

all

He saw

all this,

the time, as

in a friendly

brought into the muster room,

in

way many

my

wrong

head and

chair.

eye,

and could not see

Two policemen

wounds.

well,

and

"Don't hit

this

man

were then dressed, and

when I

the officer

I

was taken to

who was making

him

that

my

sat

it.

I

I

was saw

was bleeding

down

in the

me out of me when someone

a cell.

He

said

My

About twelve

the prison rounds

He

house was unlocked, and that

send an officer to lock

I

I

any more," and they obeyed.

asked him for permission to see the sergeant.

told

When

and

then came over to me, pulled

the chair, and were raising their clubs to strike said,

times.

years,

the rear of the station house,

several colored people being treated for their

inter-

nothing unusual was

have known Chief Devery for three or four

have spoken with him

from

if

but did not

I

came

to

wounds o'clock,

my cell,

asked why, and

I

wished he would

he would speak to the sergeant

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

about 'D

In a

it.

few minutes he returned and

said,

81

"The sergeant

—n him/ and that 'he had no business with the house'

not send anyone to lock the station house

The

were

officers

and protect

a colored

He was

with their clubs.

officers shirt.

saw

I

it

striking

my

property.

"

said,

and he did

While

was

I

in

man, John Haines, struck by

several

naked, only wearing a

under-

the colored

all

men

little

in the station

house, and without any interference. In court, the next morning,

was arraigned before Judge Cornell. The causing a riot in the street.

because

in court,

The Judge

doubts

But the

officers

Not being

where

I

was

he would

I

swore that

officer

was

I

did not have any witnesses

I

my

wanted an examination or

I

guilt,

me

who

me

told

that

me

I

was sent to the

the Penitentiary by Dr.

at

since. Dr.

Higgins told

any proceeding which

in

Penitentiary,

my head would never be

have been sick ever

testify for

in their false statements,

under $100 bonds to keep the

was treated

I

not,

and said the case was "very

were persistent

for thirty days.

lived.

this.

able to furnish this,

Higgins,

I

whether as to

and the magistrate put

aforesaid,

long as

me

his

peace.

Thomas

denied

did not have any opportunity to produce them.

did not ask

and expressed curious."

I

I

I

am employed by the Metropolitan Street am unable to work at present.

rockman, but

I

might

Railway I

right as

me

that

institute.

Company

I

as a

New York

have lived in

City for over forty-three years, and have never been arrested before in

my life.

I

did not participate in the

riots,

was not on the

street,

and

did nothing whatever to justify this conduct on the part of the police.

I

can recognize the officer

he was the

first

who made

the charge against me;

to strike me.

JOHN Sworn

to before

me

this

City

officer in the case

and County

Lucy A. I

side.

NEWMAN.

19th day of September, 1900.

JOHN F. MACCOLGAN, Notary (The

L.

Public (4),

NY. County.

was Holland.)

of New York,

ss.:

Jones, being duly sworn, deposes and says:

reside at 341

West 36th

Street,

on the fourth

John Hains resides on the same floor on the

floor front,

west

east side.

have

I

82

Citizens' Protective

read his affidavit, which

League

hereto annexed, and so far as

is

relates to

it

the occurrences at said address on the evening of August 15 I

had only returned to the

been

the country for two months.

in

window

out of the

was

all

street.

occasionally.

I

true.

it is

city at six o'clock that evening,

having

had been

in

the house, looking

saw shooting

in

the street, but this

I

done by white people. There were no colored people on the This shooting was done mostly by white people living at 342

West 36th

Street,

class of rowdies,

which

who

a

is

tenement, and

occupied by

is

a very

ored residents of the block. The police officers constantly go

out of this house.

On

the night in question

house and

officers enter this

talk

with

saw

I

a great

many

occupants.

its

of the niggers!" "Set the house afire!"

heard somebody

I

door, saying,

"G

at

— d — you; open

ger in the house." Mr. Hains,

I

About two

I'll

kill

He

denied

this.

next

—d

nig-

the only one in the house just

open the

Then

—d one

flat

every d

door.

They broke the door

saw them club Hains and accuse him of firing

of the window.

police

o'clock in

the door of Mr. Seymour's this door, or

who was

then, was asleep, and he did not

open, and

etc., etc.

and

in

They were

shouting and using abusive language, and saying, "Kill every d

the morning

low

have constantly abused and insulted the col-

a pistol

out

three of the officers beat him,

while the other three were searching the house. They did not find

my

any pistol there, so they came into said to me, this

d

"You

G—

d

—d shooting, and

you."

I

told

them

apartments, and one of

— black son of if

you don't

a

b

—

me

tell

,

I'll

you know

a lot

them about

blow the brains out of

that they could look through

my

flat,

which they

did,

but did not find anything. Then they went back to the Seymour

flat,

and

the

G—

I

heard one of the officers

d

— son of

a

b

—

,"

say, "I've

got the revolver;

and began to club him

in

let's kill

the head and

He begged them to allow him one who had the revolver said, "Shoot

other parts of his body unmercifully. to put

the d

on

—d

his clothes, nigger/'

undershirt. alive."

but the

and he was led to the station house only

Another

officer said,

At one time during

Seymour

flat to

see

"You

will

this fracas

I

be glad

if

attempted to look into the

what was going on but one of the ;

in his

you get there

officers said to

"

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

me, "You

G— d— black b —

get back

,

the brains out of you." After they

where you belong, or

left

342 inspired the policemen,

"Lynch the d is

—d niggers!"

age,

full

telling

etc., etc.

about twenty-one years of

went

I

found the pillows and sheet on the bed ple in

I

am

saw

83

a

into the room,

of blood

them

stains.

widow.

My

this clubbing,

looked out of my window to see

I

officers.

wench

One

club

and

I

The peo-

to "Burn the house!"

daughter,

who

and heard the

police use this vile and abusive language. After they

Hains

I'll

had arrested

how he was being led by the

of the rowdies in 342 said, "Look at the d

—d nigger

looking out of the window. Shoot her! Shoot her!

Lucy A. Jones. Sworn

to before

Stephen

City

B.

me

this

28th day of August, 1900.

Brague, Notary Public (125), N.Y. County.

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Mrs. Florence Randolph, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I

I

reside at

117 West 134th

resided at 433

and while

in bed,

night,

West 36th

and

until

I

lay in

bed

On Wednesday, August 15, 1900, On the said 15 of August was

Street.

Street. I

I

heard

at different intervals

me?

I

during the

about three or half past three the next morning, the

screams and shouts as of persons in agony, and hitting

ill

cries

of "Why are you

haven't done anything!" Deponent states that these cries

and screams came from the 37th Street station house, the rear of

which abuts on the

Deponent

rear of the house in

states further that her

home for four nights on Further, that her

which deponent then

resided.

husband was unable to reach

his

account of the disorder in that neighborhood.

husband works

at

43rd Street and

Fifth

Avenue.

Florence Randolph.

Sworn Geo.

City

P.

me this 12th day of September, 1900. Hammond Jr., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County.

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Susie White, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I

reside at

444 Seventh Avenue,

New York City. On

Sunday morn-

ing August 12, 1900, about six a.m., ;

came a

upstairs and, pushing the door of

man come up

said,

"Where

before the

is

here just now?"

he Bring him out."

room

name

out (his

Who

making

a

making

a close

the

men

officers in full

my room

open,

I

then started to

for

said,

"Got

call

"Did not then

officer

the man, but

Netherland

a scar?"

—the man that cut the

We're going to make

it

said,

The

officer?"

hot for you niggers!" After

further examination they found

two more men, and

after

examination of them they found that they were not

they wanted. After threatening to do up

killing Officer

said,

The

answered, "Yes."

uniform

Joe Netherland) and took hold of him, and

you looking

are

officer said, "Yes.

two

the officer had preceded me, and he called

is

rubbing his hand over his head "No.

I

1

got to the

I

man

League

Citizens' Protective

84

Thorpe they

all

the "niggers" for

left.

sisie White.

me this 10th P.HAMMOND JR., Notary

Sworn GEO.

City

to before

and County

of New York,

day of September, 1900. Public (164),

NY County.

ss.:

Miss Alice Lee, being duly sworn, deposes and says: I

reside at

433 West 36th Street

tion house).

On

Thursday, the 16,

(in

the rear of the 37th Street sta-

the night of Wednesday, August 15, 1900, also I

heard people screaming and groaning, and shouts

of people pleading not to be clubbed any more.

on the

station

house

floor,

was pleading seemed

apparently almost helpless.

to be

the upper floors leaned out of the

An

said nights

from the

men

it

who was on one of window and threw a bottle down

—

!"

Deponent

was impossible to sleep during both of the

fur-

afore-

on account of the heartrending shrieks and groans coming

station house;

lying

One man who

officer

the said man, saying, "Kill the black son of a b

ther declared that

lying

between the main building and the out

building where the cells are located.

at

saw one man

I

up

and

further, that she

saw

a

number of colored

in a corner of the station house.

Alice Lee.

Sworn GEO.

P.

me HAMMOND Jr.,

to before

this 20th day of September, 1900.

Notary Public (164), N.Y County.

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

and County

City

of New York,

85

ss.:

Cynthia Randolph, being duly sworn, deposes and

says:

Street, New York City, Manhattan BorMy home is directly in the rear of the 37th Street station house. On the evening of Wednesday, August 15, 1900, and the

433 West 36th

reside at

I

ough.

evening of August 16, 1900,

1

heard

cries

and shrieks of people being

—such groans

beaten, coming from the 37th Street station house

"O

O

Lord!

Lord! don't hit me! don't hit me!" spoken in pleading

tones. This continued

Wednesday

of

all

and was so heartrending,

as to

make

it

night,

common

with such frequency,

impossible to sleep.

bad Thursday evening. Deponent

quite so

as,

It

was not

states further that

it is

a

thing to hear coming from the 37th Street station house

cries of people, as if

they were being beaten, except since

Day; since which day

it

last

Labor

has been exceptionally quiet.

Cynthia Randolph.

me this 15th day of September, 1900. GEO. P. HAMMOND Jr., Notary Public (164), NY. County. Sworn

City

to before

and County

of New York,

ss.:

Headly Johnson, being duly sworn, deposes and I

reside at

on the

porter, N.J.

I

arrived

330 West 53rd on

my

1900, at 2:35 p.m. day, and, having

from the at

Street.

I

train at the said

arrived in

heard of the

mob by

carrying

New

riots,

am employed

I

cars running out of the

I

says:

as a

Pullman car

West Shore depot, Weehawken, depot on Thursday, August

York about 5:30

had prepared

home with me

P.M.

16,

the same

to protect myself

a revolver.

I

boarded

a car

the West Shore ferry at the foot of West 42nd Street and trans-

Avenue

ferred to an Eighth far as

40th

when

Street,

car at 34th Street,

and had proceeded

the car was assailed by a

"There's another nigger! Kill him! Lynch him!"

ready to defend myself,

when

down, saying that

mob

myself.

I

shoulder

sat I

if

down

the

car,

I

shouting,

stood up and was

me to sit me defend

passenger on the car asked

got on the car he

as requested,

saw three police

They boarded the

a

mob

as

would help

and happening to look over m\

officers in

uniform running

after the

(

ar

and, seizing me, one of the officers put his

— 86

hand

my

in

Citizens' Protective

off the car, saying,

"Come

me

off of here,

house

in the station

police officers.

The

several times.

I

officers,

way

b

club-

to the station house.

"Don't

when

hit this

I

was sent to

a cell,

man!" repeating the

was taken to the police court the next

him and appeared

states further that the officer

him

against

did the most of the clubbing;

Deponent

the

a

commenced

saw several colored men beaten by

I

was discharged. Deponent

I

arrested

who

all

sergeant at the desk,

shouted to the police

where

you black son of

off the car, they immediately

bing me, and continued to do so

same

me V When

pocket and took the revolver from me, then pulled

they had pulled

While

League

in

the police court

in fact, all

of

it

is

day,

who

the one

except one blow.

declares further that he was proceeding quietly to his

home, where he was determined one, and that

when

and was not molesting any-

the officers signified their intention to arrest

he made no show of unjustifiable

to go,

resistance,

him

and that therefore the clubbing was

and an outrage.

Headly Johnson. Sworn GEO.

P.

me this 8th day of September, 1900. HAMMOND JR., Notary Public (164), N.Y. County.

to before

and County

City

of New York,

ss.:

Maria Williams, of No. 206 West 27th No. 239 West 29th Street, ally

in

and Carrie Wells, of

the Borough of Manhattan, being sever-

duly sworn, depose and say:

On

Wednesday, August

15,

1900,

No. 239 West 29th Street, talking; 9:30

P.M.

section,

cars

Street,

We had there

we were sitting on the stoop of we had been sitting there since

learned of the assaults on the Negroes in this

and heard the noise of the crowds and the stopping of the

on Eighth Avenue. There was no crowd

There were white and colored

folks sitting

the same as occurs on any ordinary officers

came through the

street

warm

in

the street at this time.

on nearly

night.

all

the stoops,

About 11:30

several

from Eighth Avenue and walked

towards Seventh Avenue, three on the north side and four on the south

side.

officers

No

one

in the street

had been molested by anyone. These

walked up the stoops, and without any warning ordered us

Persecution of Negroes by Roughs and Policemen

same time

into our houses, at the

87

striking at us. Mrs. Wells, the

mother of deponent Carrie Wells, was on the stoop one step from the

bottom with three of her teen,

and twelve

years.

children, aged respectively fourteen, thir-

An

who

officer

know, stepped up to Mrs. Wells, and of a b in

—

,"

with her children, the officers step,

still

and

in there,

right hip,

whom we

you black son

when

she ran

following, striking at her until

looked around, and threatened to

strike us if

out again, and he then went away. Deponent Williams

looked out of her

window and saw

same procedure wherever colored said or

called "Joe,"

"Get

and struck her viciously across the

he reached the top

we came

is

said,

done to any white people.

about 2:15 in the morning some

these officers go through the

folks

We

were

sitting.

see this officer every

officers

lives at

day At

came through the block and

clubbed colored people wherever they saw them,

women. Deponent Wells

Nothing was

home with

men

as well as

her mother and helps

her keep house; deponent Williams keeps house for herself and husband. Deponent Wells tion, at

is

a

member

of the Church of the Transfigura-

29th Street and Fifth Avenue, where

years. Mr.

and Mrs.

Miller, of

McGurk, of No. 225 West 29th Street, all

West 29th

I

Street,

have attended for

know

Street, Mrs. Kloze, of

of us; Mrs.

223 West 29th

can vouch for our character.

Carrie Wells. her

MARIA

x

WILLIAMS.

mark Sworn

to before

me

this

SAMUEL MARCUS, Notary

4th day of September, 1900. Public, N.Y. County.

B Police Brutality Portent of Disaster

and Discomforting Divergence Derrick Bell

could not but

/

feel, in

ference, concerning

tion

those sorrowful years, that this

which

I

knew

much

so

on the day that the United States decided

systematically instead of little by

little

and

of course, authoritatively assured that

Jews

in

Germany

could not happen

thought bleakly, that the

human

woidd be

already, to

murder Negroes

catch-as-catch can.

what had happened

to the

Negroes

indif-

my por-

in

I

was,

to the

America, but

German Jews had probably

I

believed simi-

lar counselors.

—James Baldwin, The

Remarkably,

Fire

Next Time (1963)

the steady stream of reported instances of police

harassment of Blacks from James Baldwin's time to the present serves as both a portent of a Black holocaust in

gence of that too awful

•

As

America and

a diver-

fate:

to the portent, the pattern of incidents clearly reflecting poli-

cies

unspoken, but no

less

authorized, conveys the message that

Black people are now, as they have been throughout the history of this

country,

expendable.

accomplishments,

we

No

matter their

status,

income, or

are at risk of harassment, arrest, injury, or

death by those hired to protect the public peace.

88

89

Police Brutality

•

As

to the divergence, the reported instances of police brutality

we who

against Blacks are often so blatantly cruel that

potential victims are so diverted

by our outrage and

are the

fear that

we

to consider that Baldwin's concern expressed almost forty

fail

much that is posimany of this coun-

years ago remains potently authentic. For while tive has try's

occurred since Baldwin's time, a great

White

citizens continue to

view Blacks

the source of their

as

the cause of their sense of danger, the ultimate scapegoat in

fears,

times of economic anxiety.

Professor Patricia Williams senses that notwithstanding

accomplishments and contributions to

all

our

"White America

this country,

wishes that Blacks would just go away and shut up and stop taking

up to

much time and food and air and then the world would return Norman Rockwell loveliness and America could be employed

so its

and happy once more." Politicians late

it

only

from the presidents on down get

into policies that give priority to

work

Whites their

1

The

hood.

unless there

—

in

many

it

way

of working for

They understand

conforms to the

said about

were some good White

folks, all

applies as well to the police. It

places offers only

as a

fears

and preju-

many of them have harbored since

Of course, what my mother

be dead

run

police are not stupid.

unspoken mission and that

dices regarding Black people

message and trans-

Whites most of the time, and

for Black people in the short

in the long run.

this

is

Whites

child-

—namely that

the Black folks would

a tough, stressful job that

No

modest monetary compensation.

one

can deny the dangers of carrying a weapon and enforcing the law crime-ridden neighborhoods.

The wearing

It

early 1970s. Police

must work

life,

and

in

is

in

not a

has saved an estimated 1,500 officers since the

fashion statement.

for family

of bulletproof vests

most

all

hours of the night,

cities their starting salary

Acknowledging that police

officers

have

a

a stressful

matter

averages $30,000. stressful

job,

the

National Criminal Justice Commission maintained that "no level of stress

force

can justify the mistreatment of citizens or the use of excess w

when making an

arrest."

3

There are many methods

e

ol increasing

90

police efficiency, such as

Derrick Bell

community

more persons of

inherent fear of Blacks by hiring familiar with the

communities

while measures, even ger about

if

policing and reducing the

who

are

which they work. These worth-

in

adopted, would not reduce the ultimate dan-

which Baldwin warns. And our understandable focus on

incidents of police brutality serves to divert us ger,

color

from

this greater

dan-

one that history shows White Americans are quite capable of

both performing and then excusing.

We

live,

though,

are diluted

by our

police, the casual

in

the present.

And

daily experience.

prophecies of future disaster

When we

are stopped

by the

We know

can easily become the catastrophic.

that

innocence offers no insulation against abuse, and even graphic evi-

dence of police wrongdoing will

is

no guarantee that

their

misconduct

be punished rather than condoned. By virtue of color alone,

Blacks are suspect, and

when

stopped, the "wrong"

"wrong" response on their part can be

drawn from

rather easily

reluctance of most Blacks to discrimination

when

fatal.

cases that gain file

looking for

move

or the

These are the conclusions

media

attention.

Given the

complaints after experiencing a

home, searching

racial

even

for a job, or

gaining equal service in a restaurant or other public

facility, it is

surprising that, fearing further harassment or worse, a great

not

many

victims of police harassment do not report incidents of racially moti-

vated police misconduct. Getting beyond the traumatic event and

mending the

possible physical and certain emotional

and others involved serves

as sufficient challenge.

damage

to self

The mind simply

cannot bear thoughts of more widespread terror than has already

been experienced

at first

Consider one of

was

my top

also getting her

woman, she wrote dozen years and the

man

ago.

I

hand. students at the Harvard

medical degree to

me

about

a

at

words:

who

it

either.

Let

a

am sure she me recall what

have never forgotten the incident and

own

School,

highway stop that happened

involved have not forgotten

she said in her

Law

the same time. White and a

Police Brutality

It

was about seven on a

We

weeknight.

It

91

was summer,

so

ban community

in southeastern Connecticut.

a Black man. Westport seat.

No

one

is

was

else

a very White town.

We

in the car.

immaculate condition; not one spot of properly registered.

It

was running

affluent, subur-

John was I

was

still light.

driving.

He

is

sitting in the front

were driving a

1

965 Ford

in

We owned the car. It was We were not speeding. or alcohol. We had pulled over

rust.

perfectly.

Neither of us had consumed any drugs

about five minutes prior

was

it

were driving on a four-lane road in Westport, an

to the incident I describe to

the law" for directions to the interstate highway.

ask an

He

"officer

of

gave John the

directions.

A police car came up behind us, seemingly out of nowhere. and siren were

ers

on. It

was June

1

that learned pervasive calm affected each of us in sequence.

need any words.

we

But

did.

We

both

was a

there

knew

instead of saying,

"May

I see

We did not we wished

the routine far better than

was surprised

twist this time. Neither of us

when the cop approached the

car.

your

Its flash-

985. Fear, disgust, anger, and then

Neither of us was surprised when, license

and

registration, sir," the cop

reached in the window, unlocked the door and pulled John from the car.

Neither of us was surprised when he threw John against the car

and ordered him

to

spread his

legs,

sprinkling the sentence with vari-

ous and assorted profanities and comments about "niggers" and ger lovin' White sluts." Neither of us

We

the

body search.

were not even surprised when the cop removed his gun from

his

We knew

bet-

holster,

ter

was surprised by

"nig-

having uncovered no weapon from John's person.

than

to

speak or ask questions.

were not fellow

human

As far as we were

concerned, these

beings.

But we were surprised when the cop placed

the

gun not by

his side,

or against John's back or abdomen, but against his right temple. all the

cop wanted

was an

ther John nor I dared even flinch. I

knew

that

if I

excuse,

any

move our

Now

excuse, to pull the trigger. Nei-

eyes. I sat stone

still.

He

did not

my man

sneezed or burped, they would blow

away.

Now

that they

had a gun

to

John's head, they wanted

Where were we from, where were we have any

identification,

did

I

know

going,

this

whose car was

man, for how

long,

to it,

talk.

did

I

why were

Derrick Bell

92

we

in Westport, etc., etc.?

for

my

search), I asked get

it

if I

themselves.

ma'am?" retrieved

The gun never moved. When they asked me

had already discovered

license (they

could reach

them

I told

my

purse.

He

remained ready

About

to

later,

the registration

and had

result of "a police I

saw

"Why

And

the boy in blue

all, I

was

do own

error." Clearly,

the

White

woman

John was

I

still

is

had

not

a

a "nigger,"

'

complaint.

More

a painful

fearful than angry, they

experience. Countless other

Under those

prevails over courage. Principle

America. There

rization for police to

I

with

suffered as

victims of police abuse must reach a similar conclusion.

to survival. This

the

the holster. Then,

in

longer a "nigger lovin slut."

file a

pragmatism

gun

cop's

his day.

the partner returned. "They

value in perpetuating

conditions,

that,

is

did not search the

The other

a medical school ID. The trespass

computer

was apparently no

little

they would prefer to

temple, but the ten-minute delay

's

The couple did not

He

John's right temple.

he mumbled. The gun was placed back

been the gun at John

if

reach down.

the patrol car.

received the requisite apology. After

but

or

The other cop came around and

we had made

minutes

five

to

it

pulled out the wallet.

to fire into

just smiled on. Clearly,

car,"

to get

was afraid

the "officer" responded.

The partner returned

bag.

I

down

John's during the body

is

a

is

sacrificed

long history of de facto autho-

keep Blacks generally and Black

specifically in the subordinate place that society

men most

approves and the

law condones. Racial rhetoric? Hardly.

From the

earliest

period in our history, a

primary role of law enforcement was to keep Blacks under control, quite literally during the slavery era.

To curb runaways and prevent

the formation of insurrectionary plots, slaveholders developed elaborate systems of patrols

made up

of conscripted local Whites

who

traveled the roads and checked plantation quarters. Slaves caught

without passes were summarily punished with twenty brutality of the patrols resulted in complaints ters alike.

slaves

but the

and mas-

4

The end of Blacks,

from

lashes,

slavery in

who posed

1

863 increased the danger of the now

a greater threat to

free

Whites determined to keep the

Police Brutality

93

former chattels in their subordinate place. As

Durham,

a child in

North Carolina, during the second decade of the twentieth century, Pauli

Murray viewed the

local police "as heavily

mountainous red-faced [men] who to

armed, invariably

me seemed more

a signal

of

5

calamity than of protection." Albon Holsey, growing up in Georgia at

the turn of the century, recalled having lived in "mortal fear" of the

police, "for

they were arch-tormenters and persecutors of Negroes." 6

The North was no was convinced approached

a

Richard R. Wright

better.

policeman with

for nearly a year."

7

my

policemen were

early that

Jr.

a question until

remembered,

enemies.

had been

I

I

in

"I

never

Chicago

Leon Litwack has written that during the Jim

Crow era, the subject of the police often dominated conversations among young Blacks. The stories revolved around chases, harassment, clubbings, illegal arrests,

Far worse than

and coerced confessions. 8

what the

police did to Blacks

From 1859 through the

do.

lost their lives

is

what they failed

early 1960s, at least five

by lynching. 9 There

to

thousand Blacks

few reports that police or

are

other law enforcement officials posed a serious barrier to lynch

mobs. And, of course, few, brought to "little

justice.

to fear

of the perpetrators were ever

if any,

According to

a scholar of the period, lynchers

from those who administered the southern

had

legal sys-

tem," and prosecutors often dismissed lynchings as "an expression of

the will of the people."

10

In 1900, for example, there

In

New

were

at least

Orleans during that year, White

three days, burning and robbing their

was not this

mobs

one introduced by G. H. White,

from dying

in

a

Mass murder

Black congressman from North

a

decade

later,

Congress never passed any of the antilynching

Beyond documented lynchings by impossible to estimate the

small

stores.

committee." Despite earnest campaigns by

NAACP, which was founded

Whites

assaulted Blacks for

homes and

sufficient to save the first of several antilynching measures,

Carolina,

the

105 reported lynchings.

in cases

and other groups, the

bills

vigilante

placed before

mobs,

it

number of Blacks murdered by

where the motive was

number of those who committed

racial

is

it.

simply

individual

antagonism. Only

a

these crimes were tried for

94

Derrick Bell

them. Few were convicted, and almost none were executed. These killings continue.

By

where Blacks

contrast, in those instances

kill

Whites, the response by law enforcement agencies and the public swift

is

and often deadly.

Baldwin's suggestion that genocide could be the future fate of

Black Americans has an even more fearsome historical support in the literally

hundreds of race

became Black

invariably

quite similar.

Mobs

with

The

a

The motivations

this

which

for these riots,

massacres, were many, but the patterns were

of Whites rampaged through Black communities,

burning houses and ally

have marked and marred

riots that

country's racial landscape.

killing

every Black person they could find, usu-

government response that was inadequate or nonexistent.

patterns were set almost immediately after the Civil War. In

Memphis, Tennessee,

a failed

attempt by police

to halt alleged disorderly conduct by Black soldiers

prompted Whites

in

866, for example,

1

and two

to begin a general massacre, during

which

forty-six Blacks

Whites supporting the Blacks were

killed,

about seventy-five were

wounded, and ninety homes, twelve

schools,

and four Black churches

were burned.

12

E. L.

Godkin, cofounder of The Nation and

its

editor

at the time, wrote that the killing was "inconceivably brutal, but its

most novel and most

striking incident was, that the police

.

.

.

headed

the butchery, and roved round the town either in

company with the

White mob or

in

singly,

and occupied themselves

shooting

down

every colored person, of whatever sex, of whom they got a glimpse."

The period during and

after the First

World War was

13

a racially tur-

bulent time. Between 1915 and 1919, there were some eighteen

major

interracial disturbances. In July 1917, serious racial violence

occurred

1917

in Chester, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,

riots in East St.

and Houston. The

Louis were particularly vicious. At least thirty-

nine Blacks and nine Whites were killed. Although President Woodrow

Wilson's secretary told the press that the details of the riot were so sickening that he found self

it

difficult to

took no action and, despite media

read about them, Wilson himcriticism,

remained

silent.

14

Congress did appoint an investigative committee. This committee reported that racial tensions were brought to the boiling point by

Police Brutality

and

mills, factories,

95

imported 10,000 to 12,000 Blacks

railroads that

from the Deep South, promising good

jobs. Blacks

were hired

in

place of Whites to counteract organizing efforts by labor unions, but

many found no work and had no decent East

live.

Crowded

into

Louis and swelling the already large Black population, the

St.

newly arrived Blacks found themselves

When its

places to

in a center of lawlessness.

an unidentified car drove through the colored section and

occupants fired indiscriminately into homes, armed Blacks were

by

alerted

a prearranged signal: the ringing of a

church

bell.

flocked into the streets and attacked a police car that had investigate the disturbance.

two

car, killing

On

Whites.

The crowd

The next

officers.

All fared alike,

guilty pole,

young and

old,

and another had

as

mobs

of Blacks killed other

streets,

a

the

One was hanged from

a

telephone

rope tied around his neck and was dragged

maddened crowd

he lay prostrate and

work of

and children; none was

stabbing, clubbing, and shooting, not the

kicking

him and beating

helpless.

The negroes were pursued pleted the

women

reported,

to riotous proportions, and for hours

but unoffending negroes.

through the

him

to

fired volleys of shots into the

The committee

The crowd soon grew

manhunt continued,

the

come

learning of these attacks, Whites began to retaliate by

attacking every Black in sight.

spared.

day,

They

and the torch com-

into their homes,

destruction.

As they

fled

from the flames they

were shot down, although many of them came out with uplifted hands, pleading to be spared. It

was

a

day and night given over to arson and murder. Scenes of

horror that

would have shocked

a savage

were viewed with placid

unconcern by hundreds whose hearts knew no

seemed

As

to revel in the feast of blood and cruelty

for the police, the

committee reported that police

the violence and often participated in militia

pity,

took White rioters to

jail,

it.

When

who

failed to halt

soldiers of the state

the police released

hundreds without bond and without having

and

15

them by the

tried to identify

them.

96

When

White mob held

a

Derrick Bell

several

policemen against

other rioters were assaulting Blacks, the police

a wall

made no

while

effort to free

themselves, deeming the situation highly humorous. At one point,

the committee reported, "the police shot into a crowd of negroes

who were huddled larly

together,

making no

resistance.

It

was

a particu-

cowardly exhibition of savagery." The report found that many of

the soldiers joined the

they had

rioters, later

boasting of

how many

Blacks

killed.

There are equally grim reports of subsequent

riots:

New York

City

1935, Detroit in 1943, Los Angeles in 1965, and again following

in

the acquittal of the police

who

beat

Rodney King

in

1992.

terns of cause, casualties, and subsequent investigating

were predictably

White ate

similar.

Race

riots,

The

pat-

committees

whether sparked by Black or by

violence, always resulted in Blacks' suffering a disproportion-

number of

deaths, injuries, and loss of property.

fighting began, law

protection and often gave aid and support to In the last

And, once the

enforcement forces could not be

White

relied

on

for

rioters.

few decades, the "war on drugs" has become the major

vehicle for police harassment of Blacks and Hispanic persons of color. In fact,

the arrest, conviction, and lengthy imprisonment of

Blacks and Hispanics seems the primary goal of the antidrug campaign, which, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars, has little

effect

had

on either the importation or the use of drugs. Far more

drugs are used by Whites living in the middle- and upper-class suburbs and on college campuses, but law enforcement has focused efforts

its

on communities of color.

For example, one study revealed that, in 1989, drug arrest rates for African Americans were five times higher than arrest rates for

Whites, even though Whites and Blacks were using drugs at the same rate.

Blacks

cent of

all

make up 12 percent of the monthly drug

users,

U.S. population

and 13 per-

but they constitute 35 percent of

those arrested, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.

16

The

result:

today

almost three out of four prison admissions and 90 percent of those

imprisoned for drug offenses are Black or Hispanic.

17

Experts predict

Police Brutality

that, if current trends of

97

imprisonment continue, by 2020 almost two

out of every three young Black

men

nationwide between the ages of

18 eighteen and thirty-four will be in prison.

Even the most

more than

politicians

when

serious instances of police harassment pale

compared with the pattern of Black imprisonment that willing to stand

is

sparked by

on law-and-order platforms,

encouraged by the billion-dollar prison industry and sanctioned by general sense,

which even some Blacks

you do the

crime,

a

you do the

share, that "if

time." Unthinking slogans ignore the labor

market

increasingly closed to African Americans, particularly to those pre-

sumed

unskilled and

deemed by many employers

less desirable as

employees than recent immigrants.

Dionne Brand, the Black Canadian

feminist, writes, "North

Amer-

ica does not need Black people anymore ... for the cheap and

degraded labour we've represented across the centuries of our here."

She

asks,

"Why empower

a Black person in

better wages and better working conditions,

work

off to a less-enfranchised

In a

America

when you

Colombian or

Sri

to

lives

demand

can ship the

Lankan?" 19

world where technology makes possible the exporting of work

and where hired and

permits the exclusion of those traditionally

politics

first fired,

Black people

who

the Baldwin warning becomes chilling prophecy.

have worked the longest and hardest

are increasingly obsolete. earlier time,

when

natives of America,

last

What

will

be our

fate?

in this nation

We know that

at

an

the nation lusted for the lands held by the true it

resorted to

phony

treaties,

open warfare, and

What might be the fate of the brought here to work when the need for

finally genocide.

descendants of

Africans

their

work has

ended?

We need not rely on

prophecy

in dealing

with such questions.

We

can see the answer to them in the policies that ignore the predictable effects that

occur "when work disappears,"

book by William

Julius

Wilson puts

unemployment and not the our inner

cities

it.

The

as

the

title

result will

of

a

recent

be massive

lack of family values that has devastated

and placed one-third of our young men

even menial jobs when they lacked education and

skills

—

—denied

in prison or

98

in

Derrick Bell

them

the jaws of the criminal court system, most of

who

drug offenses. Even those of us education,

success

—the

ordination,

home,

fine car, beautiful

—enable us

to break free of

some of which

status

stylish clothes, fancy vaca-

myriad manifestations of

documented by

are

have not been able

Nor do the emblems of American

to gain insulation through success.

tion

escaped the ghetto and acquired

and perhaps professional

skills,

for nonviolent

Ellis

Cose

racial

sub-

book

in his

The Rage of a Privileged Class.

Our

careers,

Whatever our "them."

And

our very status,

are threatened because of our color.

lives,

we

are feared because

who do

there are few of us

schoolmates, or neighbors

who

we might be one

of

not have family, former

are "them." Success, then, neither insu-

from misidentitication by wary Whites nor eases our pain

lates us

when we

consider the plight of our

gle for existence in

There

is

what some

more, however.

less

fortunate brethren

who

strug-

social scientists call the underclass.

fear that those "fortunate few" Blacks,

I

but no

like this writer, are unintentional,

less critical,

components

in

the structure of racial subordination. For the charade that people of color are complicit in their conquered condition

is

made more

believ-

able because there are those Blacks who, through enterprise, fortune, and, yes,

achieved attain

—

if

a

sometimes

success that

tru

many

1

in

good

support of White progressives, have the society believe

all

Blacks could

they just worked hard or were lucky, or both. "You

made

it

despite being Black and subject to discrimination," the question goes, "so

why

can't the rest of 'them'

the question conclusion. status quo, all civil

"Why

It is a

can't the rest of 'them'

make

it?" carries its

it,

own

conclusion that justifies affirmation of the racial

and opposition

to affirmative action and, for that matter,

rights protections offering

or inconvenience any

Connor

do the same?" For those who pose

White

or the head of the

remedies that might disadvantage

less guilty

Ku Klux

of overt racism than Bull

Klan.

Despite the undisputed upward mobility of some Blacks, serious disparities in education,

income, quality of housing and health care

remain for most of them, with the gap growing both between Whites

and Blacks and between poorer Blacks and more successful Blacks.

Police Brutality

Efforts

99

by community groups and churches

many

the status of far too

awesome

this

should

give to police brutality? also dramatic in a

substance.

As

I

and Whiteness.

array of racially related barriers to a full

how

for Black people,

It

we

obviously, a serious problem, but

is,

this, in

life

we

explain the priority concern

media-drenched era

write

though,

overall,

Black people remains on the vulnerable

fringe of a society that values wealth

Given

to address these condi-

and sometimes impressive;

tions are praiseworthy

it is

which the drama trumps

in

July of 1999, the nation has ended a full

week

of media-led mourning over the deaths of John Kennedy

wife,

and

his sister-in-law in

his

Jr.,

an airplane crash. During the same

seven-day period, perhaps 800 people died of the 40,000 expected to lose their lives in auto accidents this year. Unless the crash tacular or ties

make

up

headlines and

Blacks, like

lence,

not be reported at

reality.

We

all.

identify with the victim of police vio-

but in that very identification

comfiting divergence. to acknowledge.

spec-

people, allow the dramatic incident to shield the

all

more unnerving

may

is

long periods, fatal auto accidents seldom

traffic for

Our

And

we

citizenship

is

unconsciously embrace a

dis-

more shaky than we wish

far

out-of-control police officers, with

they pose, are far from the top of the lengthy

list

all

the risk

of dangers that

threaten us both individually and as a people.

This deconstruction of the danger racist police pose for Black people

is

many

not reassuring and

is

not intended to be

intended to obstruct their all

around

us,

and

would have them or tion,

one among

contradictions in the state of Black people in America who,

while never wanted, have managed to survive

are

so. It is

but they do. As

lives.

yet,

as

The human

all

the racial handicaps

debris of racial restrictions

somehow, Black people manage, not

as

a character in

one of

Deferred: Back to the Space Traders," puts

it

my as

stories,

"Redemption

he urges Black people

not to accept the offer of aliens from another world to join them,

It's

true. Life in

know. But

as

America was hard

we

all

I

by any objective standards they should func-

also

know,

for African Americans, as

my

friends,

we

all

America, whether

ioo

Whites liked

it

or not,

is

Derrick Bell

our land, too. For better or worse,

it is

our

there. Our work is there. There we have lived we have engaged in the struggle for our dignity,

home. Our roots are our

lives,

and there

a struggle that

which so color. It

—win

attracts the

is

or lose

—

is

our true destiny. The humanity

Space Traders

is

not a

gift

that

came with our

the hard-earned result of our efforts to survive in

ture everlastingly hostile to our color.

and equality that has been our

It is

salvation.

a cul-

the quest for freedom

We

quest or betray the hopes and prayers of those

must continue that

who brought

us this

along the way.

far

Notes Patricia

1.

J.

Williams, "The Executioners Automat,' The Nation 2t>2 (July

10, 1995): 59, 63.

The Real War on Crime: The Report

2.

mission, ed. Steven R.

National Criminal Justice Com-

168.

3. Ibid.,

Eugene D. Genovese,

4.

oj (he

Donziger (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 161.

Roll,

Ionian, Roll: The

World the Slaves

Made (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1974) 617-18.

Leon

5.

(New

F.

Litwack, Trouble

in

Mind: Black Southerners

in the

Age of Jim Crow

York: Knopf, 1998), 15.

6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9.

The names of the

are listed in

victims, along with the place

Ralph Ginzburg,

ed.,

One Hundred

and date of their lynching,

Years of Lynchings (1962; reprint,

Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1988), 253-70. 10.

Michael R. Belknap, Federal

Law and

Southern Order: Racial Violence and

Constitutional Conflict in the Post-Brown South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 8-9.

11. Peter

M. Bergman, The Chronological History

(New York: Harper & Row,

of the Negro in America

1969), 330.

12. Ibid. 13. E. L.

Civil Rights

Nation

Godkin, "The Moral of the Memphis

and The Nation: 1865-1995,

Press, 1995), 3.

Riots," in Uncivil

ed. Peter

War: Race,

Rothberg (New York: The

Police Brutality

14. Elliott

Rudwick, "Race Riot

of Riot Commissions, ed.

Anthony

101

at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917," in

Piatt

(New York:

The

Politics

Collier Books, 1971), 83.

15. Ibid., 63.

16.

The Report of the National Criminal

Justice

Commission, 115.

17. Ibid., 103. 18. Ibid., 106. 19.

Dionne Brand, Bread out

116-17.

of Stone (Toronto:

Coach House

Press, 1994),

Nation under Siege Elijah

and

Muhammad,

Police-State Culture in

Claude

a variety

In

A.

Clegg

of disturbing ways, the

lance of Elijah

the FBI,

Muhammad

Chicago

III

illegal

wiretapping and surveil-

and the Nation of Islam constitutes

one of the most egregious denials of constitutional

rights

and police

brutality in the twentieth century.

Perhaps to the majority of Americans, the Nation of Islam seemed sinister

enough when

it

first

1959. Most disturbing to

developed

in strength

attracted national

some was

that the

media attention

in

Muslims had quietly

and popularity over three decades, only to sud-

denly burst onto the historical scene

when

racial tensions

ing well ahead of the floundering Civil Rights

were surg-

movement.

1

The

separatist, millenarian ideology of the quasi-Islamic

group was cer-

who had

previously been

tainly shocking to the sensibilities of those

unaware of

its

existence, not to

chauvinism and apocalyptic first

mention

visions.

time, especially after having

leaders to believe that African lently

its

fiercely articulated racial

Consequently, to hear

been conditioned by

it

for the

Civil Rights

American grievances could be nonvio-

channeled toward Christian, democratic, and integrationist

objectives,

unnerved many

Primarily, the

listeners, regardless

of background.

American public found the theology of the Nation

of Islam startling and foreboding because of

102

its

eschatology and

its

Nation under Siege

quo and the

characterization of the racial status

endgame. Though

as intricate

103

and nuanced

as

divinely ordained

any religious system,

the broad contours of the Muslims' beliefs can be summarized.

According to their leader Elijah People," or the Nation of Islam, trillions

Muhammad,

the Black "Original

had righteously ruled the earth

for

of years before their sovereignty was interrupted by White

people, a "race of devils" created by a Black scientist six millennia ago.

According to prophecy, the White

man would be

naturally evil

and deceitful and would brutally rule over the Black Nation

World War

when

I,

his

regime would end. Sometime

twentieth century, Judgment

"Mother

would

attack

who

America with bombs.

most current of

Allah, the

gods

Day would In the

during which the

arrive,

Plane," a huge, circular spaceship piloted

by Black

wake of the

a succession of Black

earth's atmosphere.

would make the United

The

destruction,

anthropomorphic

resulting conflagration

its

iniquitous civilization.

Sheltered from the destruction and spared this horrific

more

initiate a

States uninhabitable for a thousand years,

sweeping away the devilish White race and

of Islam,

scientists,

have ruled since the creation, would appear and

meltdown of the

until

in the late

vibrant and sacred than before,

fate,

the Nation

would once

again rule

the planet under a glorious theocracy led by Allah himself. 2 It

was both an incredible and

whom (and

a disquieting message,

depending on

one asked. However, for tens of thousands of people,

is)

it

was

nothing short of rock-solid religious truth, which endowed

everything, ing. Elijah

from numerals to the

Muhammad,

a

celestial bodies,

with

Georgia-born sharecropper

spiritual

mean-

who moved

to

Detroit in the 1920s, preached and elaborated on this theology for

over forty years, until his death in 1975. During this time, he and his

Nation of Islam attracted an abundance of attention, not the

which was

in the

surveillance

least of

form of government scrutiny and persecution. The

and censure of Muhammad's movement

in Chicago, the

Nation of Islam's headquarters by 1935, provide an interesting

example of how

investigative

time to a group perceived

and policing agencies responded over and un-Ameri


window on the pervasiveness of police bruu.. black community. Historian Robin D. G.

in the

Kelley and Nation columnist Patricia Williams offer their characteristically incisive voices as to

wake of

what, in the

as a nation might

A

work

do

that

is

most recent outrages, we

the

next.

destined to see wide use in

classrooms across the country

— whether

his-

in

African American studies, sociology, or law

tory,

enforcement merely

to

America's

courses

inflame

No wound

outrage.

consciousness

racial

refuses

Brutality

Police

or

has

to

festered

untreated for quite so long, and never before have

many prominent

so

voices

come

together to form

such a crucial contribution to eradicating police brutality

from American

NELSON

JILL

is

life.

a journalist and the author

of Volunteer Slavery and Straight, is

a regular columnist for

No

Chaser. She

MSNBC.COM

portion of the proceeds from r\Mct Brutality will be

donated

i

\(

i

\c

it

1

1

I

City.

New

A

5

New York

College of

in

I

CitJ

a professor of journalism at

York. She lives

and

The

Today and

ki

ki 1

I

I

to the

DESIGN in

Center

lor Constitutional Rights

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GAMMA UASON NETWORK

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PRINTED

IN nil

UNITED STATES 01

wn

RM

\

BRUT With essays by

Richard Austin

Derrick Bell

-

Stanley Crouch

-

-

Ishmael Reed

-

-

Claude A. Clegg

Ron Daniels

Flores Alexander Forbes

Nelson

-

III

Arthur Doyle

Robin D. G. Kelley

Jill

Katheryn A. Russell

-

Patricia J. Williams and personal accounts of police brutality, in some cases dating back more than a century. These essays generate rage in response to some of the thoughtless brutality described, and provide delight in that noted scholars are standing up for the voiceless and powerless masses. The sheer volume of instances of brutality recounted in this book is staggering, and the continuity of the abuse, as recent as the Diallo case, reminds us that this book could not be more timely. This book should be read by anyone concerned about ending brutality, and should be required reading in police academies throughout America!" "Police Brutality provides historic, empirical,

— Charles

Ogletree, Jr., Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, and director, Harvard Law School Criminal Justice Institute J.

"This collection of analysts on the subject of police brutality timely, but explores ilized

— Chuck D,

Fight the Power: Rap, Race, /

not only

and exposes the sickness of this unbalanced,

Western pastime thoroughly."

CURRENT AFFAIRS

is

AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES

ISBN 0-393-04883-7

780393"048834

www.uuwnorton.com

M

unciv-

author of

and

Reality