An Ohio police chief retired imme­di­ate­ly after he was placed under inves­ti­ga­tion for leav­ing a racial­ly intim­i­dat­ing note on the desk of a Black police offi­cer. Sheffield Lake Police Chief Anthony Campo retired from the depart­ment on June 29 after he became the sub­ject of an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion for leav­ing a note con­tain­ing the words “Ku Klux Klan” on the desk of the Black offi­cer. Campo had been with the depart­ment in the Cleveland sub­urb for 33 years and served as chief for eight.
Footage from June 25 shows Campo leav­ing the note on the officer’s coat in the book­ing room. Campo dis­played a jack­et intend­ed to look like the robes worn by KKK mem­bers, placed the KKK sign on the jack­et then wait­ed for the offi­cer to walk in and see the dis­play. The sur­veil­lance cam­era cap­tured the Black offi­cer read the offen­sive mes­sage and laugh. Other offi­cers can also be seen walk­ing by read­ing the note.

Mayor Dennis Bring said he became aware of the note on June 30, when law direc­tor David Graves informed him of a “real bad” com­plaint from the police union “I just looked at it and said, what’s this all about?” the may­or told The Morning Journal. “And he goes, ‘you aren’t even going to believe this.’”The com­plaint said that Campo had retrieved the note from the copy machine, then walked over and put it on the officer’s desk. “It said Ku Klux Klan on the back,” Bring said. “I don’t know how much more offen­sive you can pos­si­bly get.” According to Bring, Campo believes the note is just a joke and doesn’t under­stand why peo­ple are upset, but the Black offi­cer was clear­ly made to feel uncom­fort­able by the note. “How can you pos­si­bly think that you can put some­thing on somebody’s jack­et like that, and espe­cial­ly if they were African-American, and think this is a joke? This is the most egre­gious and offen­sive thing you could pos­si­bly do. And it’s embar­rass­ing and dis­gust­ing.” Bring took steps right away to place Campo on leave and had plans to ter­mi­nate him. When Campo learned of the harass­ment com­plaint against him, he said, “So am I fired?” and began to type his res­ig­na­tion let­ter. “He says, ‘This is what I get up to 30 years,’” the may­or said. “I said what you’re going to get is 10 min­utes to get out of your office.” Bring ulti­mate­ly allowed Campo to sub­mit his retire­ment papers. Officials are look­ing through the chief’s com­put­er to see if there is any­thing else of con­cern on the device. Bring apol­o­gized to city staff and had a con­ver­sa­tion with the Black offi­cer who was the recip­i­ent of the note. The offi­cer expressed a desire to stay with the depart­ment and said that the laugh he let out upon see­ing the note was a gut reaction.

The Black offi­cer has been with the depart­ment for less than a year. He has since retained an attor­ney, and Bring said he would back the offi­cer if he decides to take fur­ther action against Campo Campo said the note was meant to be fun­ny. “That’s all it was,” Campo said. “I had a jok­ing back-and-forth ban­ter with that offi­cer since I hired him,” he said. But Cleveland NAACP President James Hardiman believes the note is no laugh­ing mat­ter. “It’s sig­nif­i­cant because it’s indica­tive of a much big­ger prob­lem. For a per­son in a posi­tion of respon­si­bil­i­ty to assume that he can get away with that, it’s trag­ic. Is this an iso­lat­ed instance? Or, was this accept­ed pro­to­col until he got caught?” James Hardiman told Fox8.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld two elec­tion laws in the 2020 bat­tle­ground state of Arizona that chal­lengers said make it hard­er for minori­ties to vote.
In a 6 ‑3 deci­sion, all of the Conservative hacks, includ­ing three appoint­ed by Donald Trump, vot­ed to uphold Arizona’s restric­tive vot­ing rights laws.….…..Laws that were passed, mind you, after the big Trump lie after the twice impeached sociopath lied that he won the 2020 elec­tions and goad­ed his syco­phants to try to over­throw the American Government and install him, King.

Writing for the major­i­ty, Samuel Alito, yes, the same Alito who dur­ing a state of the Union address by President Barack Obama dis­re­spect­ful­ly mouthed the words,” not true,” and shook his head as the pres­i­dent spoke.
Alito said the law requires “equal open­ness” to the vot­ing process. “Mere incon­ve­nience can­not be enough to demon­strate a vio­la­tion” of the law, he wrote.
Voting law changes may have a dif­fer­ent impact on minor­i­ty and non-minor­i­ty groups, Alito said, “but the mere fact there is some dis­par­i­ty in impact does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that a sys­tem is not equal­ly open or does not give every­one an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote.”
We are now eyes wide open, see­ing the destruc­tive nature of what Mitch McConnell’s block­ade of Merrick Garland’s appoint­ment in 2016 means. It allowed a crim­i­nal in the white house to appoint three ide­o­logues to the court, tilt­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal bal­ance so far to the right that it places the Republic in grave peril.
The most nau­se­at­ing thing about John Roberts is the smug smirk on his face when he infa­mous­ly stat­ed there are no Republican or Democratic Judges. “Judges like umpires, call balls and strikes,” Roberts lied.
So much for balls and strikes.
Democrats mean­while are stuck pathet­i­cal­ly pan­der­ing to a (wannabe pres­i­dent) Joe Manchin, who nobody elect­ed pres­i­dent of the United States, who con­tin­ue to oppose get­ting rid of the Senate fil­i­buster, a Jim crow era rel­ic, and is opposed to appoint­ing addi­tion­al jus­tices to bal­ance the injus­tice of what Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump did to the Federal Judiciary.

What Alito and the oth­er Republicans on the court failed to take into account is the intent of the law; if the new law intends to dis­en­fran­chise some, then even though there may not be any­one stand­ing at polling places with guns pre­vent­ing Blacks from voting.….….….yet, the peo­ple who do not have the req­ui­site resources to meet the more strin­gent vot­ing require­ments, à la minori­ties, are dis­en­fran­chised by default. This is exact­ly what the restric­tive law intended…
This is exact­ly what John Roberts fought for all of his pro­fes­sion­al life, to restrict vot­ing rights.
It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that despite the racist nature of those who craft­ed this Republic, they envi­sioned that the very court that was is sup­posed to steady the ship of state con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly would be the very cor­ner­stone that is work­ing assid­u­ous­ly to decon­struct the Republic on ide­o­log­i­cal grounds.

‚.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

A 21-year-old man is cur­rent­ly being held with­out bond in a Volusia County jail after he was arrest­ed for point­ing a gun at a Black fam­i­ly in traf­fic, unprovoked.

The vic­tims, a Black moth­er, father, and their two chil­dren under the age of 12, told Volusia County deputies that on Sunday, June 27, a stranger fit­ting the descrip­tion of Nicholas J. Gordon in a 4‑door yel­low hatch­back pulled up to the family’s car and pro­ceed­ed to ter­ror­ize them. According to CBS 12, the man jumped out of the pas­sen­ger seat, pulled a gun on them, and threat­ened “I will kill you n — -s.” Three oth­er peo­ple were in the vehi­cle with the sus­pect at the time

No phys­i­cal harm came to the fam­i­ly, which attempt­ed to dri­ve away, afraid for their lives, but was pur­sued by the sus­pect. When the pur­su­ing vehi­cle caught up to the fam­i­ly, “the dri­ver stepped out of the car and yelled more obscen­i­ties at them before get­ting back in, turn­ing around and flee­ing,” accord­ing to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office press release.
The vic­tims drove away from the inter­sec­tion try­ing to get to safe­ty, but the sus­pect vehi­cle chased after them and caught up with the fam­i­ly again when they got stopped in traf­fic at the inter­sec­tion of International Speedway Boulevard. The vic­tims told deputies the dri­ver stepped out of the car and yelled more obscen­i­ties at them before get­ting back in, turn­ing around and fleeing.

The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office iden­ti­fied Gordon’s vehi­cle via busi­ness sur­veil­lance videos, which show it fol­low­ing the victim’s car. He was pulled over when offi­cers spot­ted him not far from the scene of the inci­dent. Initially, he told offi­cers that he hadn’t been in town and that he didn’t have any weapons in the vehi­cle, before lat­er admit­ting that there was a gun in his lunch­box. Gordon assumed he was stopped because “that Black lady that brake-checked me, and then she start­ed try­ing to fol­low me…”

Volusia County offi­cers then told him that he and his vehi­cle fit the exact descrip­tion giv­en by the vic­tims who alleged: “a firearm being used in the vehi­cle.” Only after being shown sur­veil­lance footage by detec­tives did Gordon admit to his involve­ment in the inci­dent and blamed the fam­i­ly for attempt­ing to dri­ve off after hit­ting his car and attempt­ing to run. According to Gordon, he and his friends were chas­ing them “to try and exchange infor­ma­tion,” how­ev­er no reports of an acci­dent were filed and there was no vis­i­ble dam­age to Gordon’s vehicle.

When asked why he armed him­self dur­ing the sup­posed inno­cent exchange of infor­ma­tion, Gordon admit­ted that “he knew (the vic­tims) were African-American and he knew from past expe­ri­ences African-Americans can be vio­lent.” He also admit­ted that the fam­i­ly did “noth­ing” to him to make him feel threat­ened enough to draw a weapon, oth­er than being Black. Detectives con­clud­ed that the inci­dent was “clear­ly” a hate crime and that the fam­i­ly was tar­get­ed sim­ply because of the col­or of their skin. “At the con­clu­sion of the inves­ti­ga­tion, all evi­dence indi­cat­ed this inci­dent was clear­ly just a vio­lent hate crime where the sus­pect point­ed a firearm direct­ly at the vic­tims, a fam­i­ly in their car with chil­dren, who were sole­ly tar­get­ed for being African-American,” they wrote in closing

MEANWHILE IN MASSACHUSETTS

2 shot dead in Massachusetts may have been targeted because they were Black, district attorney says

An Air Force vet­er­an and a retired Massachusetts state troop­er who were fatal­ly shot near Boston over the week­end may have been tar­get­ed because they were Black, a dis­trict attor­ney said. The vic­tims were iden­ti­fied as retired Massachusetts State Police Trooper Dave Green and Ramona Cooper, a 60-year-old staff sergeant in the Air Force.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins iden­ti­fied the shoot­er as a 28-year-old White man, Nathan Allen, and said inves­ti­ga­tors found “trou­bling” anti­se­mit­ic and racist state­ments in his writings.
Rollins said Allen stole a box truck and was dri­ving at a high rate of speed when it crashed into anoth­er vehi­cle and a home in Winthrop on Saturday. While his motive remains unclear, Rollins said Allen walked away from the wreck past sev­er­al peo­ple who were not Black before open­ing fire on bystanders Green and Cooper, Rollins said.

Cooper was shot three times in the back and died, Rollins said. Green was shot four times in the head and three times in the tor­so. Allen was then fatal­ly shot by police.
Rollins said the inves­ti­ga­tion was in the pre­lim­i­nary stages but vowed to uncov­er Allen’s motive. She said his writ­ings con­tained state­ments that were anti-Semitic and racist against Black indi­vid­u­als, but she did not pro­vide fur­ther detail. Rollins’ office lat­er said in a state­ment Allen “wrote about the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the white race” and “about whites being ‘apex preda­tors,” and drew swastikas.
The office said Allen was mar­ried and employed, had a Ph.D., and no crim­i­nal his­to­ry. Rollins said Allen was legal­ly licensed to car­ry a gun

She said it was a “sad day” for the community.

“These two peo­ple pro­tect­ed our rights — they fought for us to be safe and to have the opin­ions that we have, and they were exe­cut­ed yes­ter­day,” Rollins said. “We will find out why and find out more about the man that did this.”

Winthrop Police Chief Terrance Delahanty said “we have no tol­er­ance for hate in this community.”

Green served as a state troop­er for 36 years, Rollins said. Green retired from the state police in 2016, Massachusetts State Police Col. Christopher Mason told The Associated Press. He was out­side his home when he was fatal­ly shot, Mason said. A state police spokesper­son said Saturday that offi­cials are inves­ti­gat­ing whether the male vic­tim “may have been try­ing to engage the sus­pect to end the threat,” the AP reports.“Trooper Green was wide­ly respect­ed and well-liked by his fel­low Troopers, sev­er­al of whom yes­ter­day described him as a ‘true gen­tle­man’ and always cour­te­ous to the pub­lic and metic­u­lous in his duties,” Mason told the AP in an emailed state­ment. “From what we learned yes­ter­day, he was held in equal­ly-high regard by his neigh­bors and friends in Winthrop.”

By Erin Donaghue.

The sentence meted out to this sociopath will mean absolutely nothing. It will not change a single white racist cop’s behavior. There are far too many protections for their criminal conduct.

Minneapolis con­vict­ed killer-cop Derek Chauvin is sched­uled to be sen­tenced today, Friday, June 25^th, by judge Peter Cahill for mur­der­ing George Floyd.
This is not a case n which jus­tice can or will be served; there is no bring­ing George Floyd back to life.
No amount of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey paid to the Floyd fam­i­ly will com­pen­sate for his loss; no amount of prison time for that degen­er­ate killer will mean that jus­tice is served.
For mil­lions in this coun­try, mis­ter Floyd’s life was worth­less, unde­serv­ing of respect, unde­serv­ing of def­er­ence and care.
We can­not change those hate-filled [deplorables], but for the rest of us, we must con­tin­ue to observe the unique nature of how sacro­sanct the one life God gave us is.

American police con­tin­ue to kill unarmed civil­ians at a rate that makes it dif­fi­cult to believe they do not go out look­ing for rea­sons to fire their weapons.
The lev­els of dis­re­spect they exert when deal­ing with Black Americans are shock­ing to behold, but it is not just the hos­til­i­ty with which they car­ry out those polic­ing func­tions; it is also the arro­gance and sense that they do so with­out any fear of being held accountable.
No one, cer­tain­ly no one in the Black com­mu­ni­ty should be under any illu­sions that any­thing that resem­bles a fair sen­tence by Peter Cahill today will sig­ni­fy that police are being held account­able for their crimes.
White racist cow­boys across the coun­try, pro­tect­ed by acqui­es­cent pros­e­cu­tors and judges all the way up to the Supreme Court’s qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty doc­trine, con­tin­ue to bru­tal­ize and kill inno­cent peo­ple of col­or under col­or of law daily.

The con­vic­tion and sen­tenc­ing of a mur­der­ous sociopath who killed with aggra­va­tion (in front of chil­dren) should not lull any­one into believ­ing that any­thing is chang­ing about this mur­der­ous sys­tem that has nev­er respect­ed the lives of Black citizens.
What has hap­pened is that despite the social jus­tice march­es of 2020, we see a con­ve­nient] across-the-board uptick in vio­lent crimes, which is serv­ing to shift the focus from police crimes to look­ing at oth­er crimes.
One is forced to won­der, who are the peo­ple doing those shootings?
Why is it that at a time when there is a nation­al focus on reimag­in­ing polic­ing, all of a sud­den, gun crimes begin to tick upward after decades of low­er vio­lent crime sta­tis­tics (if we dis­re­gard the white mass killings that plague America)?

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

In 1992 Rudolph Guiliani led a most­ly white mob of drunk­en cops up to the steps of city hall in a riot against the Mayor. Frothing at the mouth like rabid dogs, the pro­test­ers hurled racial slurs and used every pejo­ra­tive in their lim­it­ed vocab­u­lar­ies to debase David Dinkins, the city’s first African-American Mayor.
Rudolph Guiliani, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, want­ed to be may­or of New York City, and he would do any­thing to get into Gracie Mansion.

What Rudolph Guiliani did that day, September 16^th, 1992, should’ve land­ed him in prison for incit­ing a riot. Nothing was done to him, so Guiliani rode on the back of that police riot into city hall. Rudolph Guiliani cre­at­ed a lie against Dinkins; as a result of that lie, a drunk­en depraved mob of over ten thou­sand racist degen­er­ates marched on city hall with the express desire to cause harm to the sit­ting mayor.
The real rea­son behind the riot was not about any­thing the Mayor had done wrong. They were opposed to the idea that they had to report to and be held account­able to a black Mayor.
In an arti­cle pub­lished at the Cato Institute, Nat Hentoff, New Yorker and Civil Libertarian, wrote the following.

In 1912, white mobs set fire to black church­es and black-owned busi­ness­es. Author Patrick Phillips revis­its the inci­dent in his book, Blood at the Root. Originally.

FRESH AIR.
David Bianculli, edi­tor of the web­site TV Worth Watching, sit­ting in for Terry Gross, author of a book about a night­mar­ish and racist chap­ter in American his­to­ry. Little more than a cen­tu­ry ago, in Georgia in the year 1912, the white res­i­dents of Forsyth County ter­ror­ized and drove out the entire black pop­u­la­tion, about 1,100 peo­ple. That was the white response to two inci­dents — the alleged rape of a white woman by a black man and the rape and beat­ing of a young, white woman who died of her injuries. A lynch mob attacked and hanged one black sus­pect. And two teenagers, fol­low­ing a short tri­al, were hanged in pub­lic executions.

Patrick Phillips is one of the white peo­ple who grew up in this coun­ty when it was still all-white, and peo­ple of col­or were def­i­nite­ly not wel­come. His par­ents were among the civ­il rights pro­test­ers who, in the 1980s, protest­ed against the coun­ty’s con­tin­u­ing seg­re­ga­tion. His book titled “Blood At The Root” is now out in paper­back. It’s based on his archival research, as well as his inter­views with the town’s res­i­dents and descen­dants of the black peo­ple who fled in 1912. Terry Gross spoke with Patrick Phillips in 2016.

read more here; https://​www​.npr​.org/​t​r​a​n​s​c​r​i​p​t​s​/​5​6​9​1​5​6​832

For many migrants arriv­ing in the United States regard­less of col­or, pre­con­ceived notions abound about one of the old­est indige­nous peo­ple in the coun­try, speak­ing of African-Americans.
For those peo­ple, the white­washed American pro­pa­gan­da against Blacks has long pen­e­trat­ed their per­cep­tions and influ­enced their think­ing all the way back in their coun­try of birth.
“Blacks are lazy; they are crim­i­nals, they are unwill­ing to pull them­selves up by their boot­straps, they refuse to take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able in the country.”[sic]
I, too, felt that for far too many African-Americans, the pos­si­bil­i­ties in America were untapped and unexploited.
Today, I still believe that despite what obtains in the way of obsta­cles, a greater effort to over­come is nec­es­sary to once and for all change the over­whelm­ing bal­ance of pow­er tilt­ed toward whites.
I hold those sen­ti­ments because I believe that any­thing else is a fool’s errand that will not change blacks’ eco­nom­ic or social plight in the United States.
The pur­vey­ors of the anti-black pro­pa­gan­da nev­er both­ered men­tion­ing that their dis­dain and deri­sion for the work eth­ic of blacks start­ed after they stopped work­ing for free.
And so, the con­tin­u­a­tion of neg­a­tive per­cep­tions against blacks in their own home­land is con­tin­u­al­ly assured because of the sys­temic cam­paign against them by their own gov­ern­ment and people.

Whether on the moth­er con­ti­nent or in the dias­po­ra, African peo­ple have been placed at an extreme dis­ad­van­tage due to European crimes against them. For well over five (5) hun­dred years, begin­ning with the Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias, the African con­ti­nent was pil­laged for its resources, its peo­ple mur­dered, raped, bru­tal­ized, and had all kinds of crimes com­mit­ted against them.
Almost five and a half cen­turies after Bartolomeu Dias first des­e­crat­ed the con­ti­nent with his pres­ence; lit­er­al­ly, every European nation, both great and small, became excep­tion­al­ly rich from their plun­der and exploita­tion of not only the African land but the African people.
Having mur­dered count­less mil­lions, stolen their wealth, stolen their cul­tur­al her­itage & tra­di­tions, lied about who they are, raped and sodom­ized them, enslaved and com­mit­ted all kinds of heinous acts against them, one would have thought that descen­dants of those who per­pe­trat­ed those acts of sav­agery would feel some shame.
As I con­sid­er this sub­ject, I won­dered how could they not feel shame?
Then it occurred to me that if their ances­tors had it in them to do the things they did to our ances­tors, why would I expect their descen­dants would have the capac­i­ty for shame?

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​l​e​s​t​-​w​e​-​f​o​r​g​e​t​-​m​o​m​e​n​t​s​-​i​n​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​w​h​i​t​e​s​-​w​o​u​l​d​-​h​a​v​e​-​y​o​u​-​n​o​t​-​l​e​a​r​n​-​a​b​o​ut/

In the United States, lit­er­al­ly every attempt to give the recent­ly enslaved blacks a chance at sur­vival was erased in 1877 after the peri­od known as recon­struc­tion end­ed, while Rutherford B Hayes, a Republican, was in office.
Jim crow laws were ush­ered in across the south, which made the lives of the recent­ly freed blacks just as bad as when they were under the bondage of forced servitude.
Even though the war between the Union and the Confederacy effec­tive­ly end­ed slav­ery as it were, in the north and oth­er parts of the coun­try, black peo­ple were hat­ed and treat­ed no bet­ter than in the south, where jim crow was the law of the land.
Across the coun­try, in every state, racism was entrenched in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at all levels.
In hous­ing, edu­ca­tion, health­care, food qual­i­ty, employ­ment, polic­ing, and every oth­er gov­ern­ment sec­tor, blacks were red­lined and seg­re­gat­ed to sec­ond-class sta­tus as a mat­ter of gov­ern­ment policy.
It was gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks then; it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to restrict the rights of blacks today.

And so it remains, in the Senate, peo­ple like Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, and oth­ers are vehe­ment­ly opposed to the teach­ing of race in classrooms.
In many states, par­tic­u­lar­ly those run by Republicans, there are efforts to remove any teach­ings about race in schools.
If their actions were right­eous, why are they opposed to young peo­ple learn­ing about what they did?
The Associated Press report­ed that teach­ers and pro­fes­sors in Idaho will be pre­vent­ed from teach­ing stu­dents about race. In addi­tion, Oklahoma teach­ers will be pro­hib­it­ed from say­ing cer­tain peo­ple are inher­ent­ly racist or oppres­sive, whether con­scious­ly or unconsciously.
Tennessee schools will risk los­ing state aid if their lessons include par­tic­u­lar con­cepts about race and racism.
Governors and leg­is­la­tures in Republican-con­trolled states across the coun­try are mov­ing to define what race-relat­ed ideas can be taught in pub­lic schools and col­leges, a reac­tion to the nation’s racial reck­on­ing after last year’s police killing of George Floyd. The mea­sures have been signed into law in at least three states and are con­sid­ered in many more.
Education Weekly said thou­sands of schools across the coun­try might soon be forced to upend cur­ric­u­la, dis­con­tin­ue eth­nic stud­ies cours­es and anti-bias train­ing for teach­ers, and shut down class­room dis­cus­sions on Black Lives Matter and oth­er race-relat­ed events like the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capitol and mur­der of George Floyd.
That’s because a wave of leg­is­la­tion in some states aims to severe­ly lim­it how teach­ers and schools address race — a cam­paign that dis­trict lead­ers and experts say would squash a range of efforts to root out dis­crim­i­na­tion, bias, and racism expe­ri­enced by stu­dents of color.

As Republican leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try embark on a scorched-earth assault against vot­ing rights aid­ed by the Roberts Supreme Court, those same states are also active­ly engaged in white­wash­ing history.
They intend to scrub the geno­cide their ances­tors per­pet­u­at­ed to give them the advan­tage they now enjoy.
They argue that peo­ple are not respon­si­ble for the crimes of their ances­tors, even as they take more steps to lim­it and cur­tail the rights of the descen­dants of those peo­ple on whom they per­pet­u­at­ed those crimes.
The amus­ing thing is that as it was when they were com­mit­ting the lynch­ings and oth­er mur­ders, so too were they opposed to black edu­ca­tion, while at the same time they took pho­tographs so they could gloat over their gris­ly crimes.
How do they expect that they are going to stop the free flow of infor­ma­tion? Are they count­ing on black peo­ple’s con­tin­ued reluc­tance to be educated?
I’ll tell you what scared the hell out of them. It was the legions of young white men and women who marched for racial jus­tice last sum­mer after Derek Chauvin and his cohorts lynchedGeorge Floyd.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

White Mobs Attack Chicago’s Black Communities

By noon on July 31, 1919, more than thir­ty fires had been set in Chicago’s African American neigh­bor­hood. Set by angry white mobs, these acts of arson were part of an extend­ed bar­rage of vio­lence tar­get­ing Chicago’s Black com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing a sum­mer filled with racial vio­lence in America. This sea­son was dubbed “Red Summer of 1919,” and saw attacks tar­get­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties erupt in major cities through­out the coun­try. The five days of riots and attacks that upend­ed Chicago are wide­ly con­sid­ered the worst of the Red Summer riots.

The vio­lence began on July 27, 1919, when a 17-year-old Black boy named Eugene Williams drowned in Lake Michigan. Eugene and some friends had been swim­ming at the seg­re­gat­ed beach when a white man grew angry that the teens had drift­ed into the “white side” of the lake. The man threw a rock at the group, strik­ing Eugene in the head, knock­ing him uncon­scious, and caus­ing him to drown despite onlook­ers attempts to save him. This ter­ri­ble tragedy took place near the start of the Great Migration, a peri­od in which African Americans still liv­ing pri­mar­i­ly in the south­ern states were relo­cat­ing in large num­bers to the North and West. Fleeing racial ter­ror lynch­ing, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and eco­nom­ic oppres­sion, mil­lions of Black peo­ple left behind their homes and com­mu­ni­ties seek­ing, jobs, safe­ty, and the still elu­sive dream of free­dom. Many head­ed for urban cen­ters like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Chicago — often to find low-pay­ing jobs, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment, and infor­mal but strict res­i­den­tial seg­re­ga­tion poli­cies that rel­e­gat­ed them to over-crowd­ed and poor qual­i­ty hous­ing. Chicago’s Black pop­u­la­tion near­ly dou­bled between 1915 and 1940; in 1919, that wave was new and grow­ing, and tens of thou­sands of Black migrants had already arrived. Many white res­i­dents of the city saw Black Americans as an eco­nom­ic and social threat.

On May 10, 1919, the Chicago Tribune pub­lished a let­ter to the edi­tor from a 52-year-old white man and Chicago home­own­er blam­ing Black migra­tion — rather than white prej­u­dice or insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism — for his falling prop­er­ty val­ues. “The blacks came into our neigh­bor­hood and the white peo­ple are mov­ing out as fast as they can,” the let­ter read. “My prop­er­ty has depre­ci­at­ed 50 per­cent. I hate the Negroes on this account; they ruin the prop­er­ty where they live. Wish the whites would orga­nize a pro­tec­tive league to keep the blacks in their place.”

Just weeks lat­er, on July 27^th, young Eugene Williams was drowned for being Black. Police respond­ed to the scene but refused to arrest the white man wit­ness­es iden­ti­fied as the rock throw­er; instead, offi­cers arrest­ed a Black man at the scene for not fol­low­ing their orders to calm down. Black onlook­ers who protest­ed this injus­tice were shout­ed down and attacked by grow­ing white crowds. Soon, a con­flict sparked by the mur­der of a Black boy became an oppor­tu­ni­ty for white mobs to act on the ten­sion and anger they felt toward Chicago’s grow­ing Black com­mu­ni­ty. For sev­er­al days, white mobs ter­ror­ized Black Chicago, attack­ing peo­ple and destroy­ing prop­er­ty. The vio­lence con­tin­ued until August 3^rd.

Chicago Tribune | May 10, 1919, Page 12

White Transit Workers Protest Black Workers’ Promotions in Philadelphia.

On August 1, 1944, white employ­ees of the Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) launched a strike to protest the company’s deci­sion to pro­mote eight Black work­ers to the posi­tion of trol­ley dri­ver — a job pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for white men. The Black men were pro­mot­ed after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Orders 8802 and 9436, which pro­hib­it­ed com­pa­nies with gov­ern­ment con­tracts from dis­crim­i­nat­ing on the basis of race or reli­gion, and required com­pa­nies to include a nondis­crim­i­na­tion clause in their contracts.

As the United States pre­pared to enter World War II in the 1940s, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, quick­ly became one of the coun­try’s largest war pro­duc­tion sources. As many as 600,000 work­ers relied on the PTC to get to their work­places, includ­ing many fac­to­ries. The strike threat­ened the entire city’s abil­i­ty to func­tion, and crip­pled crit­i­cal war-time production.

White PTC employ­ees James McMenamin, James Dixon, Frank Thompson, and Frank Carney led the strike, and threat­ened to main­tain the protest until the Black work­ers were demot­ed. The strike grew to include over 6,000 work­ers, pre­vent­ed near­ly two mil­lion peo­ple from trav­el­ing and cost busi­ness­es almost $1 mil­lion per day.

On the strike’s third day, President Roosevelt autho­rized the War Department to take con­trol of the PTC. Two days lat­er, 5,000 U.S. Army troops moved into Philadelphia to pre­vent upris­ings and pro­tect PTC employ­ees who crossed the pick­et line. Despite the mil­i­tary pres­ence, the con­fronta­tion result­ed in at least thir­teen acts of racial vio­lence, includ­ing sev­er­al non-fatal shootings.

After more than a week, the strike end­ed when PTC employ­ees fac­ing threats of ter­mi­na­tion, loss of draft defer­ments, and inel­i­gi­bil­i­ty for unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits chose to return to work with­out achiev­ing their goal of block­ing Black work­ers’ oppor­tu­ni­ty for advance­ment. By September 1944, the PTC’s first Black trol­ley dri­vers were on duty.

North Carolina Votes to Disenfranchise Black Residents

On August 2, 1900, North Carolina approved a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that required res­i­dents to pass a lit­er­a­cy test in order to reg­is­ter to vote. Under the pro­vi­sion, illit­er­ate reg­is­trants with a rel­a­tive who had vot­ed in an elec­tion pri­or to the year 1863 were exempt from the requirement.

These pro­vi­sions effec­tive­ly dis­en­fran­chised most of the state’s African-American vot­ing pop­u­la­tion. At the same time, the rules pre­served the vot­ing rights of most of the state’s poor and une­d­u­cat­ed white res­i­dents — who were much more like­ly to have a rel­a­tive eli­gi­ble to vote in 1863, before the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and pas­sage of the 14^th and 15^th Amendments. To the drafters and sup­port­ers of the amend­ment, this out­come was by design.

In the days and months lead­ing up to the spe­cial elec­tion to vote on the lit­er­a­cy test pro­pos­al, cam­paign events through­out the state encour­aged white cit­i­zens to cast their votes in favor of the pol­i­cy that would achieve Black dis­en­fran­chise­ment. On the eve of the elec­tion, judi­cial can­di­date and for­mer Confederate offi­cer William A. Guthrie pro­claimed to a crowd of over 12,000:

“The peo­ple of the east and west are com­ing togeth­er. The amend­ment will pass and the negro curbed in every part of the state. Good gov­ern­ment will be restored every­where. Then our ladies can walk the streets of our towns in safe­ty, day or night. White women will not be afraid to go about alone in the coun­try. We will teach the col­ored race that our peo­ple must be respect­ed. We have restrained and con­quered oth­er races. They obeyed our demands or were exter­mi­nat­ed with the sword. We are at a cri­sis. Let us rise to the occa­sion. Come together!”

The cam­paign was also marked by wide­spread attempts to sup­press African Americans’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the elec­tion. “No negro must vote. All white men must vote,” insist­ed one promi­nent politi­cian. “We’ll try to bring this about by law. If that don’t go — well, we can try anoth­er tack. The white man must and will rule in North Carolina, no mat­ter what meth­ods are nec­es­sary to give him authority.”

The effect of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry vot­ing laws in North Carolina and through­out the South would per­sist for gen­er­a­tions, effec­tive­ly dis­en­fran­chis­ing Black peo­ple through­out the region with lit­tle fed­er­al inter­ven­tion until the pas­sage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Five Days of Racial Violence Leave 38 Dead and 1,000 Black Families Homeless in Chicago

On August 3, 1919, sev­er­al days of racial vio­lence tar­get­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties in Chicago, Illinois, came to an end after inter­ven­tion by the state mili­tia. After five days of gun­fire, beat­ings, and burn­ings, fif­teen white peo­ple and twen­ty-three African Americans had been killed, 537 peo­ple injured, and 1,000 African American fam­i­lies were left homeless.

During the Great Migration, Chicago, Illinois, was a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for many Black migrants leav­ing the South in search of eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty and a refuge from racial ter­ror lynch­ing. From 1910 to 1920, the city’s Black pop­u­la­tion swelled from 44,000 to 109,000 peo­ple. The new arrivals joined thou­sands of white immi­grants also relo­cat­ing to Chicago in search of work. Many Black new­com­ers set­tled on Chicago’s south side, in neigh­bor­hoods adja­cent to com­mu­ni­ties of European immi­grants, close to plen­ti­ful indus­tri­al jobs. But racism was not com­plete­ly behind them.

Although African American migrants had fled the Southern brand of racial vio­lence, once in Chicago they still faced racial ani­mos­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­tion that cre­at­ed chal­leng­ing liv­ing con­di­tions like over­crowd­ed hous­ing, inequal­i­ty at work, police bru­tal­i­ty, and seg­re­ga­tion by cus­tom rather than law.

In the sec­ond decade of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, seg­re­ga­tion in Chicago was not as legal­ly-reg­u­lat­ed as in Southern cities, but unwrit­ten rules restrict­ed Black peo­ple from many neigh­bor­hoods, work­places, and “pub­lic” areas — includ­ing beach­es. On July 27, 1919, a Black youth named Eugene Williams drowned at a Chicago beach after a white man struck him with a rock for drift­ing to the “white” side of Lake Michigan. When police refused to arrest the rock throw­er, Black wit­ness­es protest­ed; white mobs respond­ed with wide­spread vio­lence that last­ed five days.

Over that ter­ri­fy­ing peri­od, white mobs attacked Black peo­ple on sight, set fire to more than thir­ty prop­er­ties on Chicago’s south side, and even attempt­ed to attack Provident Hospital — which served most­ly Black patients. Six thou­sand National Guard troops were called in to quell the unrest, and many Black peo­ple left Chicago after the ter­ri­fy­ing experience.

Though state offi­cials announced a plan to inves­ti­gate and pun­ish all par­ties respon­si­ble for vio­lence and destruc­tion of prop­er­ty dur­ing the unrest, many more Black peo­ple were arrest­ed than white. The sub­se­quent grand jury pro­ceed­ings result­ed in the indict­ment of pri­mar­i­ly Black defen­dants. Later tes­ti­fy­ing before a com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the roots of the Chicago vio­lence, the city’s police chief admit­ted this was due to bias in his depart­ment of white officers.

“There is no doubt that a great many police offi­cers were gross­ly unfair in mak­ing arrests,” he said in 1922. “They shut their eyes to offens­es com­mit­ted by white men while they were very vig­or­ous in get­ting all the col­ored men they could get.

Missing Civil Rights Workers Found Dead in MississippiOn August 4, 1964, fol­low­ing sev­er­al weeks of nation­al news cov­er­age and an inten­sive search by fed­er­al author­i­ties, the bod­ies of civ­il rights work­ers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were found in Longdale, Mississippi. The three men, who went miss­ing after being released from a local Mississippi jail, had been shot to death and buried in a shal­low grave.

Earlier that year, Michael Schwerner had trav­eled to Mississippi to orga­nize Black cit­i­zens to vote. A white New Yorker work­ing with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Mr. Schwerner worked exten­sive­ly with a Black CORE mem­ber from Meridian, Mississippi, named James Chaney. The activist pair led an effort to reg­is­ter Black vot­ers and helped Mt. Zion Methodist Church, a Black church in Longdale, cre­ate an orga­niz­ing cen­ter. These devel­op­ments angered local mem­bers of the Ku Klux Klan; on June 16, while Mr. Schwerner and Mr. Chaney were away, Klansmen torched the church and assault­ed its members.

On June 21, Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney, and a new white CORE mem­ber named Andrew Goodman inves­ti­gat­ed the church burn­ing and then head­ed for Meridian, Mississippi. Knowing that they were in con­stant dan­ger of attack, Schwerner told col­leagues in Meridian to search for them if they did not arrive by 4:00 p.m. While pass­ing through the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the three men were stopped by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price.

A mem­ber of the Ku Klux Klan, Mr. Price had been mon­i­tor­ing the activ­i­ties of the civ­il rights work­ers. He arrest­ed the men on traf­fic charges and held them in jail for about sev­en hours before releas­ing them on bail. Price escort­ed Mr. Schwerner, Mr. Chaney, and Mr. Goodman out of town, but soon re-arrest­ed the men and held them until oth­er Klansmen could join. They were not seen alive again.

When the three activists did not arrive in Meridian, they were report­ed miss­ing and soon became the sub­jects of a high­ly-pub­li­cized FBI search and inves­ti­ga­tion. As the days turned into weeks, some Mississippi offi­cials and white seg­re­ga­tion­ists accused civ­il rights lead­ers of fab­ri­cat­ing the work­ers’ dis­ap­pear­ance to gain sup­port for their cause. Once the three men’s bod­ies were dis­cov­ered on August 4, how­ev­er, no one could deny their fates.

While their dis­ap­pear­ance result­ed in nation­al news sto­ries, Michael Schwerner’s wife and fel­low-CORE work­er, Rita, admon­ished reporters in 1964: “The slay­ing of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my hus­band and Andrew Goodman were white that the nation­al alarm has been sound­ed.” Indeed, inves­ti­ga­tors search­ing Mississippi’s woods, fields, swamps, and rivers that sum­mer found the remains of eight African American men: Henry Dee and Charles Moore, col­lege stu­dents who were kid­napped, beat­en, and mur­dered in May 1964; and six uniden­ti­fied corpses, includ­ing one wear­ing a CORE T‑shirt.

Black Workers Sue Memphis Cotton Gin for Racial Discrimination

On August 5, 2014, three Black men filed a fed­er­al law­suit against the own­ers of Atkinson Cotton Warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee — a work­place where the men had expe­ri­enced racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment, and threats from a white super­vi­sor, and then been fired for report­ing the sit­u­a­tion. The law­suit, brought by Untonia Harris, Marrio Mangrum, and Vashone Ford sought anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion train­ing for all employ­ees and future mon­i­tor­ing of the busi­ness environment.

Two months before, Mr. Harris and Mr. Mangrum had filed a fed­er­al com­plaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) report­ing that, on a dai­ly basis, African American employ­ees were called “mon­keys” and told, “you need to think like a white man.” The com­plaint also assert­ed that their white super­vi­sor would yell: “Hey, Black boy, get over there and get my cot­ton,” and once — accord­ing to Mr. Harris — “pulled his pants down in front of us and told us to kiss his white tail.”

Eventually, Mr. Harris began to use his cell phone to record the encoun­ters. On one occa­sion, when Mr. Harris asked to use a microwave, the super­vi­sor told him he couldn’t, “because you are not white.” In anoth­er, the super­vi­sor said about a water foun­tain, “I need to put a sign here that says ‘white peo­ple only’.” When Mr. Harris asked what would hap­pen if he drank from the foun­tain, the super­vi­sor replied: “That’s when we hang you.”

This dis­crim­i­na­tion was a direct lega­cy of the Jim Crow era, and the super­vi­sor was record­ed favor­ably recall­ing the days of seg­re­ga­tion. “Back then, nobody thought any­thing about it,” he said. “Now every­body is made to where to think it’s bad.”

After the reports of dis­crim­i­na­tion became pub­lic, the own­er of the ware­house claimed no knowl­edge of the abuse and stat­ed that ware­house man­age­ment out­sourced to anoth­er com­pa­ny. The man­age­ment com­pa­ny, Federal Compress, soon report­ed that the super­vi­sor was no longer their employ­ee, and set­tled the law­suit in May 2015.

After Generations of Inaction, U.S. Government Enacts Voting Rights Act

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law. The leg­is­la­tion was the cul­mi­na­tion of orga­nized civ­il rights activism and came after unchecked, sys­tem­at­ic vot­er sup­pres­sion had tar­get­ed African American com­mu­ni­ties in the South for gen­er­a­tions. The VRA out­lawed dis­crim­i­na­to­ry bar­ri­ers to vot­ing like poll tax­es and lit­er­a­cy tests, and also imposed strict over­sight upon states and dis­tricts with his­to­ries of vot­er dis­crim­i­na­tion. The new law quick­ly proved extreme­ly effec­tive; Black reg­is­tra­tion rates soon rose through­out the South and Black offi­cials were elect­ed at the high­est rates since Reconstruction. In this way, the VRA direct­ly con­front­ed and addressed a cen­tu­ry of racist vot­ing policies.

After the end of the Civil War and the legal abo­li­tion of slav­ery, the Reconstruction Era spawned con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship rights to for­mer­ly enslaved Black peo­ple. The 14^th Amendment, adopt­ed in 1868, guar­an­teed cit­i­zen­ship and equal pro­tec­tion under the law, while the 15^th Amendment, rat­i­fied in 1870, pro­hib­it­ed deny­ing cit­i­zens the right to vote based on “race, col­or, or pre­vi­ous con­di­tion of servi­tude.” By 1877, how­ev­er, Reconstruction end­ed, fed­er­al author­i­ties large­ly aban­doned their duty to enforce these new rights for Black peo­ple, and Southern white lead­ers set out to use laws and vio­lent intim­i­da­tion to rel­e­gate Black peo­ple back to a posi­tion of oppres­sion and servitude.

Despite their new Constitutional rights, African Americans seek­ing to vote faced legal obsta­cles, threats of eco­nom­ic hard­ship, and even risked lynch­ing. Poll tax­es, grand­fa­ther claus­es, felony dis­en­fran­chise­ment poli­cies, and lit­er­a­cy tests were all passed with the intent of sup­press­ing the Black vote, and enforced in dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ways to achieve that result. For more than a cen­tu­ry after eman­ci­pa­tion, the major­i­ty of Black Americans lived in the South and were large­ly disenfranchised.

Throughout this time, Black com­mu­ni­ties and lead­ers braved great risk to mount reg­is­tra­tion cam­paigns and pub­lic protests. Many Black peo­ple were killed for such activism, but the efforts con­tin­ued, cul­mi­nat­ing in the Selma Movement. In March 1965, the nation’s atten­tion turned to “Bloody Sunday”, a wide­ly-tele­vised law enforce­ment attack on peace­ful pro­test­ers march­ing to the Alabama State Capitol to show sup­port for Black vot­ing rights. The vio­lent treat­ment suf­fered by activists in Alabama sparked pub­lic out­cry that helped spur pas­sage of the VRA.

Throughout the 1960s, oppo­nents chal­lenged the Voting Rights Act’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, but it was repeat­ed­ly upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2013, how­ev­er, the Court’s deci­sion in Shelby County v. Holder sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­ened one of the law’s most effec­tive pro­vi­sions. The deci­sion unleashed a surge in vot­er sup­pres­sion mea­sures — includ­ing strict vot­er ID laws, cut­ting vot­ing times, restrict­ing reg­is­tra­tion, and purg­ing vot­er rolls–that are under­min­ing vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion by peo­ple of color

Thousands Lynch Two Black Men in Marion, Indiana

On August 7, 1930, a white mob used crow­bars and ham­mers to break into the Grant County jail in Marion, Indiana, to lynch three young Black men, who had been accused of mur­der­ing a white man and assault­ing a white woman, and arrest­ed ear­li­er that after­noon. Thomas Shipp, 18, and Abram Smith, 19, were severe­ly beat­en and lynched, and 16-year-old James Cameron was bad­ly beat­en but survived.

During that after­noon, word of the charges against these young Black men spread and a grow­ing mob of angry white res­i­dents gath­ered out­side the Grant County Jail. Around 9:30 p.m., the mob attempt­ed to rush the jail and was repelled by tear gas. An hour lat­er, mem­bers of the mob suc­cess­ful­ly bar­reled past the sher­iff and three deputies, grabbed Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith from their cells as they prayed, and dragged them into the street. By then, the crowd totaled between 5000 and 10,000 peo­ple — half the white pop­u­la­tion of Grant County. While spec­ta­tors watched and cheered, the mob beat, tor­tured, and hanged both men from trees in the cour­t­house yard, bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing them with­out ben­e­fit of tri­al or legal proof of guilt.

As the bod­ies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith remained sus­pend­ed above the crowd, mem­bers of the mob re-entered the jail and grabbed 16-year-old James Cameron, anoth­er Black youth accused of being involved in the crime. The mob beat Mr. Cameron severe­ly and was prepar­ing to hang him along­side the oth­ers when a mem­ber of the crowd inter­vened and said he was inno­cent. Mr. Cameron was released.

The bru­tal­ized bod­ies of Mr. Shipp and Mr. Smith were hanged from trees in the cour­t­house yard and kept there for hours as a crowd of white men, women, and chil­dren grew by the thou­sands. Public spec­ta­cle lynch­ings, in which large crowds of white peo­ple, often num­ber­ing in the thou­sands, gath­ered to wit­ness and par­tic­i­pate in pre-planned heinous killings that fea­tured pro­longed tor­ture, muti­la­tion, dis­mem­ber­ment and/​or burn­ing of the vic­tim, were com­mon dur­ing this time. When the sher­iff even­tu­al­ly cut the ropes off the corpses, the crowd rushed for­ward to take parts of the men’s bod­ies as sou­venirs, before final­ly dispersing.

Enraged by the lynch­ing, the NAACP trav­eled to Marion to inves­ti­gate, and lat­er pro­vid­ed the U.S Attorney General with the names of 27 peo­ple believed to have par­tic­i­pat­ed. Though the lynch­ing was pho­tographed and spec­ta­tors were clear­ly vis­i­ble, local res­i­dents claimed not to rec­og­nize any­one pic­tured. Charges were final­ly brought against the lead­ers of the mob, but all-white juries acquit­ted them, despite this over­whelm­ing evi­dence. The alleged assault vic­tim, Mary Ball, tes­ti­fied years lat­er that she had not been raped.

A pho­to­graph of Mr. Shipp’s and Mr. Smith’s bat­tered corpses hang­ing life­less from a tree, with white spec­ta­tors proud­ly stand­ing below, remains one of the most icon­ic and infa­mous pho­tographs of an American lynch­ing. In 1937, an encounter with the pho­to inspired New York school­teacher Abe Meeropol to write “Strange Fruit,” a haunt­ing poem about lynch­ing that lat­er became a famous song record­ed by Billie Holiday.
The total­i­ty of this infor­ma­tion was derived from https://​cal​en​dar​.eji​.org/​r​a​c​i​a​l​-​i​n​j​u​s​t​i​c​e​/​a​u​g​/09

An April 1865 pho­to of the graves of Union sol­diers buried at the race course-turned-Confederate-prison where his­to­ri­ans believe the ear­li­est Memorial Day cer­e­mo­ny took place. Civil war pho­tographs, 1861 – 1865, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.Nowa­days, Memorial Day hon­ors vet­er­ans of all wars, but its roots are in America’s dead­liest con­flict, the Civil War. Approximately 620,000 sol­diers died, about two-thirds from dis­ease.The work of hon­or­ing the dead began right away all over the coun­try, and sev­er­al American towns claim to be the birth­place of Memorial Day. Researchers have traced the ear­li­est annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion to women who laid flow­ers on sol­diers’ graves in the Civil War hos­pi­tal town of Columbus, Miss., in April 1866. But his­to­ri­ans like the Pulitzer Prize win­ner David Blight have tried to raise aware­ness of freed slaves who dec­o­rat­ed sol­diers’ graves a year ear­li­er, to make sure their sto­ry gets told too. According to Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a com­mem­o­ra­tion orga­nized by freed slaves and some white mis­sion­ar­ies took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a for­mer planters’ race­track where Confederates held cap­tured Union sol­diers dur­ing the last year of the war. At least 257 pris­on­ers died, many of dis­ease, and were buried in unmarked graves, so black res­i­dents of Charleston decid­ed to give them a prop­er bur­ial. Read the full sto­ry here. https://​time​.com/​5​8​3​6​4​4​4​/​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​e​m​o​r​i​a​l​-​d​ay/

If you are Black and not a delu­sion­al Republican, and if you both­er to take the time to stop scrolling or spend­ing your time on buf­foon­ery, you may begin to under­stand why Republicans do not want your his­to­ry taught in schools.
Better yet, you may begin to under­stand why they left these things out of the History books and have sought to white­wash history.
You may even start to under­stand why old clos­et racists like Mitch McConnell and igno­rant scam­mers like Donald Trump would like to keep these his­tor­i­cal facts hid­den from you.
Never mind me, though, you may go back to Instagram, Facebook, or wher­ev­er it is you spend your time online, [not] inform­ing yourselves…

FACTS

On the morn­ing of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was rid­ing in the ele­va­tor in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what fol­lowed vary from per­son to per­son. Accounts of an inci­dent cir­cu­lat­ed among the city’s white com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing the day and became more exag­ger­at­ed with each telling.
Tulsa police arrest­ed Rowland the fol­low­ing day and began an inves­ti­ga­tion. An inflam­ma­to­ry report in the May 31 edi­tion of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a con­fronta­tion between black and white-armed mobs around the cour­t­house where the sher­iff and his men had bar­ri­cad­ed the top floor to pro­tect Rowland. Shots were fired, and the out­num­bered African Americans began retreat­ing to the Greenwood District.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was loot­ed and burned by white riot­ers. Governor Robertson declared mar­tial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assist­ed fire­men in putting out fires, took African Americans out of the hands of vig­i­lantes, and impris­oned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 peo­ple were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.
Twenty-four hours after the vio­lence erupt­ed, it ceased. In the wake of the vio­lence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 peo­ple were treat­ed for injuries, and con­tem­po­rary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 peo­ple may have died. To under­stand the Tulsa Race Massacre, it is impor­tant to under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of the times. Dick Rowland, Sarah Page, and an unknown gun­man were the sparks that ignit­ed a long-smol­der­ing fire. Jim Crow, jeal­ousy, white suprema­cy, and land lust all played roles lead­ing to the destruc­tion and loss of life on May 31 and June 1, 1921. In 2001, an offi­cial Race Riot Commission was orga­nized to review the details of the event. No one will ever know the absolute truth of what hap­pened dur­ing the hours of the Race Massacre. However, by exam­in­ing his­tor­i­cal resources, mem­bers of the Race Riot Commission deter­mined many details to be unde­ni­able. “These are not myths, not rumors, not spec­u­la­tions, not ques­tioned. They are the his­tor­i­cal record.”

In recent years there has been an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about what to call the event that hap­pened in 1921. Historically, it has been called the Tulsa Race Riot. Some say it was giv­en that name at the time for insur­ance pur­pos­es. Designating it a riot pre­vent­ed insur­ance com­pa­nies from hav­ing to pay ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of Greenwood whose homes and busi­ness­es were destroyed. It also was com­mon at the time for any large-scale clash between dif­fer­ent racial or eth­nic groups to be cat­e­go­rized as a race riot.

What do YOU think?

Definition of RIOT: a tumul­tuous dis­tur­bance of the pub­lic peace by three or more per­sons assem­bled togeth­er and act­ing with com­mon intent. Definition of MASSACRE: the act or an instance of killing a num­ber of usu­al­ly help­less or unre­sist­ing human beings under cir­cum­stances of atroc­i­ty or cruelty.

“Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into long­stand­ing oral his­to­ry accounts of mass graves at var­i­ous sites in Tulsa, alleged bur­ial sites for scores of most­ly black vic­tims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Mayor Bynum con­tin­ues to empha­size that this process, which may be long and tedious, is an inves­ti­ga­tion. There is no cer­tain­ty that one or more mass graves will be locat­ed. The inves­ti­ga­tion is geared toward answer­ing, as best we can, the lin­ger­ing his­tor­i­cal ques­tion, orig­i­nat­ing through oral his­to­ries, about the exis­tence of one or more mass graves linked to the mas­sacre. By this under­tak­ing, we hon­or our oral his­to­ry and its tellers. This his­to­ry, sep­a­rate and apart from its truth, has val­ue. Who told what to whom? Why? Was it accu­rate? These are all ques­tions worth explor­ing. The cur­rent Mass Graves Investigation seeks to address those ques­tions and more. It deserves the sup­port of the entire community. ”
(A pro­duc­tion of TulsaHistory​.org.)

Last year was a year in which the world was engulfed in deal­ing with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Millions lost their lives, and still, peo­ple con­tin­ue to die and be infect­ed with the dan­ger­ous virus. However, the year 2020 was also a year in which Donald Trump was thank­ful­ly boot­ed from the pres­i­den­cy, and who can for­get that the entire world was also engulfed in anoth­er upheaval, speak­ing of the on-cam­era mur­der of George Floyd by Minnesota cops.
Some pun­dits declared the march­es and out­cry against police vio­lence (a) ‘a water­shed moment’,(b) a sem­i­nal moment; oth­ers posit­ed © “there was no going back to the way things were.”
Me? I was­n’t so sure. The idea that there would be a sig­nif­i­cant change in American polic­ing because (a) anoth­er black man was mur­dered by them or (b) that some white peo­ple had come out to demon­strate against the police because they were bored from being locked away because of the virus is to show that one does not under­stand the racism in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

One of the unset­tling aspects of the American response to polic­ing has been the hypocrisy with which it seeks to pun­ish alle­ga­tions of law enforce­ment excess­es in small­er, less pow­er­ful nations yet sup­port the same abus­es from its own law enforce­ment officers.
In recent times, I have writ­ten a few arti­cles in which I have spo­ken about how the United States used leg­is­la­tion like the Leahy Law and mon­ey, or more appro­pri­ate­ly, hold­ing back aid to pun­ish ele­ments of a for­eign agency based on alle­ga­tions of abuse.
I raise the issue of American hypocrisy against the inher­ent and sys­tem­at­ic cor­rup­tion that runs the gamut across the American Justice sys­tem, (a) not just the police but (b) in the com­plic­i­ty of many pros­e­cu­tors in cov­er­ing up police crimes when they should be pros­e­cut­ing them © the racial bias­es in some judges in how they view cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the sen­tences they hand down depend­ing on the col­or and zip codes of defen­dants, and (d) how leg­is­la­tors allow police to get away with crimes like turn­ing off body-worn cam­eras, tam­per­ing with and destroy­ing evi­dence, with­hold­ing record­ings from body-worn cam­eras, and worse.
It is hard to imag­ine a sys­tem more cor­rupt than that in the United States in its totality.
No case is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the endem­ic cor­rup­tion than this 2019 New Orleans case… Louisiana State Police mur­dered Ronald Greene, fal­si­fied evi­dence, lied to his fam­i­ly about how he died, and hid cru­cial evi­dence from investigators.
To date, none of the mur­der­ous crim­i­nals in uni­form has been held account­able for the series of crimes they com­mit­ted. Instead, they are still employed as police offi­cers, embold­ened to com­mit more felonies against the black com­mu­ni­ty by a sys­tem that ben­e­fits from black oppression.

In 2019 Ronald Greene, a black man, was engaged in a high-speed chase with Louisiana State Police. He was even­tu­al­ly caught, hand­cuffed, choked, beat­en, tased repeat­ed­ly, and had his legs hogtied. Ronald Green cried out in pain as he was forced to lie face down on his chest, hands tied behind his back and legs tied as well. Medical experts have long argued that some­one in that posi­tion finds it dif­fi­cult to breathe.
But the Louisiana police on the scene under Lt. John Clary’s direc­tive ensured that Ronald Greene remained in [exact­ly] that dan­ger­ous position.
In addi­tion to the dan­ger­ous posi­tion that mis­ter green was in, he was repeat­ed­ly sprayed in the face with pep­per spray.
Even though Lt. John Clary and detec­tives were wear­ing body-worn cam­eras, Clary lied that there was no cam­era record­ing of the events of that day.
There is no doubt why Clary and his bunch of crim­i­nals were intent on the evi­dence stay­ing hid­den; they dragged the hogtied Greene by his ankles, his face on the ground.
According to the Associated Press; Clary, the high­est-rank­ing offi­cer among the at least six all-white state troop­ers at the scene of Greene’s May 10, 2019, arrest, told inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er that day that [he had no body-cam­era footage of the inci­dent] — a state­ment proven to be untrue when his 30-minute body cam­era video of the arrest emerged last month.
Clary, who arrived at the scene just sec­onds after troop­ers stunned, choked, and punched Greene to get him into hand­cuffs, told inves­ti­ga­tors that Greene “was still, yelling and scream­ing … and he was still resist­ing, even though he was hand­cuffed. He was still try­ing to get away and was not cooperating.”
All of the evi­dence of the mur­der and lies were swept under the rug by Louisiana State author­i­ties until the Associated Press began inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent, found video evi­dence of their crimes, and made the evi­dence public.
According to the AP report­ing, Clary’s own video, pub­lished last week by the AP and lat­er released by the state, shows Greene “lying on the ground, face down, hand­cuffed behind his back, leg shack­les on his ankles, utter­ing the phras­es, ‘I’m sor­ry, or ‘I’m scared’ or ‘Yes sir’ or ‘Okay.” Clary’s video shows troop­ers order­ing the heavy­set, 49-year-old Greene to remain face­down on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine min­utes — a tac­tic use-of-force experts crit­i­cized as dan­ger­ous and like­ly to have restrict­ed his breath­ing. Greene can be seen on Clary’s footage strug­gling to prop him­self up on his side. “Don’t you turn over! Lay on your bel­ly! Lay on your bel­ly!” Trooper Kory York yells before briefly drag­ging Greene by the chain that con­nects his ankle shackles.

As we try to expose the cor­rup­tion on this medi­um and seek to bring to the fore the dire straits blacks find them­selves in with police abuse, we show that the cor­rup­tion runs from the top down and is not con­fined to the police.
The Huffingtonpost report­ed that Louisiana State police also did not open an admin­is­tra­tive inves­ti­ga­tion into the troop­ers’ use of force until 474 days after Greene’s death. And Louisiana offi­cials from Gov. John Bel Edwards on down repeat­ed­ly refused to pub­licly release any body cam­era video of Greene’s arrest for more than two years, until last week after AP began pub­lish­ing videos it obtained.
What Louisiana state did to Ronald Greene with the acqui­es­cence of Govern Edwards and oth­ers was no dif­fer­ent than slave catch­ing in the 21^st century.
An aver­age per­son who lies to inves­ti­ga­tors goes to prison; a per­son who fal­si­fies or destroys evi­dence goes to prison. A per­son who com­mits mur­der goes to prison; if they are black, their chance of leav­ing prison is next to zero if they are not executed.
In the United States, police mur­der black cit­i­zens, destroy evi­dence, and lie to oth­er cops who inves­ti­gate them.
Prosecutors help them to hide evi­dence. Governors assist in the coverups, and leg­is­la­tures pass addi­tion­al laws to pro­tect the murderers.
What is the point of the cit­i­zens being asked to pay for body cam­eras when the police are allowed to turn them off when they com­mit crimes?
Police rou­tine­ly turn off their body-worn cam­eras, com­mit crimes then turn them back on after they have staged scenes to sup­port the lies they want to tell…
Police depart­ments get to decide if the record­ings are released to the pub­lic, and the great­est bull­shit of all is that although the cam­eras are paid fr with our tax dol­lars and the agents of the states are employed and paid with tax dol­lars, leg­is­la­tors have decid­ed that the record­ings on body cams are [not] pub­lic records.
No, the killing of George Floyd was not a sem­i­nal moment in the police killing of black peo­ple; nei­ther was it a water­shed moment; it was sim­ply anoth­er moment in which the state mur­dered a black man, and a bunch of peo­ple want­ed to vent from hav­ing being told that they had to stay home.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Andrew Womble, the District Attorney In the North Carolina County in which Andrew Brown was mur­dered by Sheriff’s deputies, on Tuesday, May 18^th, announced that there would be no charges against the offi­cers who shot a flee­ing Brown as he tried to escape get­ting arrested.
Andrew Brown was shot at least three times with all three bul­lets enter­ing his body from the back, one through his shoul­der blades and two through the back of the head.
The offi­cial police ver­sion is that they went to the premis­es to search for illic­it drugs on one war­rant (there we go again, anoth­er life lost/​ruined based on the war on drugs), the oth­er was to arrest Brown on an out­stand­ing warrant.
In nei­ther instance was Andrew Brown tried on either war­rant, found guilty, and sen­tenced to death.
Yet the police embarked upon a process of enforce­ment which said we have the right as state agents to exe­cute you if you do not bow to our demands.
The District attor­ney and 2022 aspir­ing supe­ri­or court judge can­di­date Andrew Womble, in deliv­er­ing his deci­sion, was most caus­tic in his remarks, unboth­ered about the sanc­ti­ty of Andrew Brown’s life, much more to give def­er­ence to the dead.
One would imag­ine that as the peo­ple’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives, he would be a lit­tle more cir­cum­spect in his lan­guage in com­mu­ni­cat­ing, at least to Andrew Brown’s fam­i­ly, that [he]had no inter­est in bring­ing mis­ter Brown’s killers to justice.
The Brown fam­i­ly called the shoot­ing an execution.……and it was exact­ly that, an execution.
But, the most dis­tress­ing event for me per­son­al­ly goes beyond their refusal to release the body­cam videos, the judge’s deci­sion to refuse to release the video to the pub­lic, or the doc­tored 20-sec­ond clip they showed to the Brown family…
It is the cal­lous dis­re­gard and dis­re­spect that Andrew Womble showed to the Brown fam­i­ly when they are griev­ing the death of their loved one at the hands of state agents.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​n​c​-​p​r​o​s​e​c​u​t​o​r​-​a​l​l​-​b​u​t​-​s​a​i​d​-​a​n​d​r​e​w​-​b​r​o​w​n​-​w​a​s​-​d​i​s​p​o​s​a​b​le/

The shock­ing real­i­ty is that for decades black peo­ple have been com­plain­ing about police act­ing like invad­ing armies with­in their com­mu­ni­ties, killing them with­out consequence.
I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly on this phe­nom­e­non, argu­ing that the police are empow­ered because District Attorneys like Andrew Womble are com­plic­it in their mur­der­ous activ­i­ties, which empow­ers them to act with absolute impuni­ty. Additionally, the nation’s high­est court gives them an extra lay­er of immunity.
But think for a moment about the incal­cu­la­ble harm done when peo­ple like District Attorney Andrew Womble are ele­vat­ed to supe­ri­or court judge as he is aspir­ing to be next year?
Imagine what he will do as a tri­al judge?
Just imag­ine what kind of supe­ri­or court judge he will be when pre­sid­ing over a bench tri­al in which a cop is a defen­dant? Under Womble, that cop has zero chance of fac­ing justice.
Imagine a sce­nario in which a black defen­dant, inno­cent or not, has to face the ran­cid racism of Andrew Womble; what are his or her chances of get­ting a fair trial?
This is a grave mat­ter that should gar­ner every sane per­son­’s atten­tion. Imagine the harm that Womble as a sin­gle Racist piece of garbage District Attorney has wrought in one munic­i­pal­i­ty to the black com­mu­ni­ty, then build it out to the fifty states.
The answer is the pris­ons filled with black bod­ies, and worse, the many inno­cents who have been exe­cut­ed on the per­se­cu­tion of a jus­tice sys­tem led by the likes of Andrew Womble.

ANDREW WOMBLE’S JUSTIFICATION:

District Attorney Womble said the fol­low­ing in explain­ing his deci­sion not to file crim­i­nal charges against the cow­boy killers who exter­mi­nat­ed Andrew Brown with bul­lets to the back of the head;“ the three offi­cers rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was jus­ti­fied.”
[Sure]! Cops are allowed to judge, jury, & exe­cu­tion­ers, with a heavy empha­sis on the exe­cu­tion­er. The sad real­i­ty is that giv­en the American stan­dard on when lethal force may jus­ti­fi­ably be used to stop a per­son flee­ing from being appre­hend­ed, police have low­ered the bar of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to irra­tional lev­els heav­i­ly influ­enced by the lack of val­ue they them­selves place on human life…
Given the pow­er cops have, no one should be under any illu­sions that those who have min­i­mal edu­ca­tion­al train­ing will be judi­cious stew­ards of the trust placed in them; a few may, most won’t.
“Mr. Brown’s death, while trag­ic, was jus­ti­fied because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to rea­son­ably believe it was nec­es­sary to use dead­ly force to pro­tect them­selves and oth­ers.”
If you did not know who made these state­ments and was asked to make a guess, the quick­est answer would be that these state­ments in red were made by a defense attor­ney, not a pros­e­cu­tor who is sup­posed to pros­e­cute crim­i­nal con­duct.“Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, car­ry on the per­for­mance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into custody.“They could not sim­ply let him go, as has been sug­gest­ed. He engaged in dan­ger­ous, felony-lev­el mis­con­duct as he decid­ed to flee.”

In oth­er words, deputies had war­rants signed by a judge to arrest Andrew Brown, and on that basis, if mis­ter Brown did not sur­ren­der, the police had every right to end it.
Kill him.….Kill him they did.…this was a death squad that had one inten­tion, they were going to mur­der him, flee­ing or not.
I have zero con­fi­dence that a Federal inves­ti­ga­tion will bring the mur­der­ers to jus­tice, but hope springs eternal.
Nevertheless, a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion needs to be done to unearth all of the facts. Facts that Andrew Womble and his cohorts seem all too quick to sweep under the car­pet. It appears that some­one had it out for Andrew Brown. Regardless of mis­ter brown’s crim­i­nal past, the police have no right to exe­cute any­one. The raid was car­ried out like a hit.
The way this whole event unfold­ed and the secre­cy and cov­er-up that has ensued stinks of some­thing sinister.
Did some­one want him dead? Was his killing planned before the cops encoun­tered mis­ter Brown?

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

If you ever set foot in a police acad­e­my to under­go police train­ing, you know that they ham­mer it home to you that peo­ple do not want to give up their freedom.
Police offi­cers are tasked with tak­ing the bad guys in (or so cops frame it); today, we all know that some­times that sce­nario is reversed, and the bad guys are the ones doing the tak­ing in.
Then there are the argu­ments that if you do not want to go to jail, stop com­mit­ting crimes.
As a police offi­cer, I loved those com­ments because they were sup­port­ive of me. However, as a for­mer cop, my feel­ings towards those com­ments are a bit more nuanced today.
Seeing polic­ing unfold in the United States for three decades has giv­en me a more nuanced per­spec­tive about the sup­port police receive from cer­tain seg­ments of the soci­ety, as well as my own feel­ings toward them…
There is a rea­son that pen­cils are made with erasers; it is a cer­tain­ty that we will make mis­takes as we try to nav­i­gate our way through life. Some are priv­i­leged to be born wealthy, oth­ers are born white, and then some have the dou­ble priv­i­lege of being wealthy and white.
Wealth and white skin are insu­la­tors against police aggres­sion in the United States; for those rea­sons, the sup­port police receive as they con­tin­ue to mur­der peo­ple of col­or will not change sim­ply because they mur­der more peo­ple of col­or and peo­ple demonstrate.
If that was a solu­tion, police would have stopped mur­der­ing black peo­ple decades ago.
The repub­lic was cre­at­ed on the con­cept that the black man had no rights that the white man is oblig­at­ed to respect.
Today, Police still oper­ate with that same con­tempt for the rights of blacks. They do not see them­selves as serv­ing the over forty mil­lion Black ‑Americans who spend a whop­ping 1.3 tril­lion dol­lars each year to help pro­vide them with jobs and cushy pen­sion plans. Instead, they see them­selves as over­seers, tasked with keep­ing the black pop­u­la­tion in its place.

If you are won­der­ing where the police got that mind­set from, look at your state leg­is­la­tures and the laws they pass to fur­ther empow­er and insu­late police from account­abil­i­ty when­ev­er nation­al atten­tion is focused on the police’s actions.
Conventional wis­dom would sug­gest that state leg­is­la­tures, as a mat­ter of con­science, would attempt to cor­rect some of the laws and poli­cies that give cov­er to police to com­mit crimes and not be held accountable.
That is not so; state after state, Republican leg­is­la­tures have passed laws that give police more cov­er to abuse and kill with­out consequence.
Republican gov­er­nors are sign­ing those bills into law, even as there are still peo­ple in the streets demon­strat­ing against police crimes.
The supreme court is equal­ly as guilty; the (qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty) doc­trine it cre­at­ed so insu­lates police from account­abil­i­ty, it should be renamed [qual­i­fied impunity].
Worse yet, are the pros­e­cu­tors who are sup­posed to go after the worse actors in soci­ety, regard­less of who those actors are.
It is shock­ing to see how far [pros­e­cu­tors] go to pro­tect rather than pros­e­cute cor­rupt, mur­der­ous cops.
The cor­rup­tion runs deep­er than many under­stand. Police and pros­e­cu­tors, more often than not, work hand in hand to effec­tu­ate the cor­rup­tion. For exam­ple, hid­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that would exon­er­ate a defen­dant to cov­er up for police, even when they act out­side the law to mur­der inno­cent unarmed citizens.
In some cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors refuse to pros­e­cute white offend­ers who arent even police offi­cers, they even go a step fur­ther to make the case to oth­ers not to pros­e­cute white mur­der­ers who open­ly and unlaw­ful­ly kill black cit­i­zens, as was the case in the Amhaud Arbery mur­der case.

No one should be sur­prised that local pros­e­cu­tors would pro­tect the cops who mur­dered Andrew Brown. In many cas­es, those pros­e­cu­tors may not pull the trig­ger, but they are equal­ly as guilty as the mur­der­ous cops who do.
North Carolina District Attorney Andrew Womble said that three offi­cers involved in killing Brown “rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was jus­ti­fied. Womble will be run­ning to be elect­ed supe­ri­or court judge in 2022, so if you believe that there is jus­tice in the courts when these types of peo­ple are sit­ting in judg­ment, guess again?
According to HuffPost, Pasquotank County District Attorney Andrew Womble said Tuesday that three offi­cers involved in the killing of Brown “rea­son­ably believed” that dead­ly force was justified.
So there you have it, armed police offi­cers who could have fol­lowed a flee­ing Brown decid­ed that they could­n’t both­er. Hence, they exe­cut­ed him, know­ing that as far as District Attorney and aspir­ing supe­ri­or court judge Andrew Womble is con­cerned, they would have his blessings.
Womble went fur­ther to show his dis­dain for the life of Andrew Brown, quote; “Mr. Brown’s death, while trag­ic, was jus­ti­fied, because Mr. Brown’s actions caused three deputies with the Pasquotank County Sheriff’s Office to rea­son­ably believe it was nec­es­sary to use dead­ly force to pro­tect them­selves and others.”
Here is a pros­e­cu­tor act­ing as God in giv­ing abso­lu­tion to three mur­der­ers because he believed that the sin­ner, mis­ter Andrew Brown was beyond redemp­tion and there­fore disposable.
In so doing Andrew Womble by default, not only grant­ed the killer-cops abso­lu­tion, he gave future killer cops the green light to com­mit the same kind of murder.
Womble knew that even if the accused was dri­ving away the cops could have moved out of the way(assuming they were even in the way) because between the judge, the pros­e­cu­tor, and the police they kept the video evi­dence under wraps only show­ing a 20-sec­ond clip that they edit­ed to the fam­i­ly of mis­ter Brown.
If you believed that there was any doubt that the District attor­ney, Andrew Womble agreed that the police were right to act as judge, jury, and exe­cu­tion­er, here is Andrew Womblee’s next statement.
Quote; “Officers were duty-bound to stand their ground, car­ry on the per­for­mance of their duties and take Andrew Brown into cus­tody,” Womble said. “They could not sim­ply let him go, as has been sug­gest­ed. He engaged in dan­ger­ous, felony-lev­el mis­con­duct as he decid­ed to flee.”Closed quote.
(Carry on the per­for­mance of their duties) code,’ for exe­cut­ing Andrew Brown.’
There you have it, fuck Andrew Brown kill his ass, and be done with it, in sim­ple language.
That is what a pros­e­cu­tor paid by the black com­mu­ni­ty to pro­tect the black com­mu­ni­ty, had to say about police killing a mem­ber of the black community.
Andrew Brown was total­ly and com­plete­ly dis­pos­able as far as Andrew Womble is con­cerned. And so he exe­cut­ed that right in his decree that none of the offi­cers will be charged with a crime( by his office) in the killing of Andrew Brown.

.

.

.

.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

I nev­er cared about Liz Chaney, the rock-sol­id right-wing daugh­ter of grumpy old fart Dick Chaney Bush 43^rd vice pres­i­dent. I mean, nei­ther was I a fan of the father; I thought that there was nev­er a bet­ter case to be made for a man who was more deserv­ing of the name, ‘Dick.’
Ok, that was prob­a­bly a cheap shot, but there is some­thing to be said about the grav­i­tas of a guy who was hired to do a vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date search and end­ed up choos­ing himself.
If you are not fol­low­ing my drift, in the cam­paign lead­ing up to the 2000 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, the Bush cam­paign hired [Dick] Chaney to find a suit­able can­di­date to run on the tick­et with old Georgie boy.
Chaney searched and found himself.
We all knew how that turned out as old Dick was instru­men­tal in egging on his boss to enter the sov­er­eign nation of Iraq under pretenses.

Liz Chaney is no hero for stand­ing up to the Republican lie that the Democrats stole the 2020 elections.
Liz Chaney deserves no acco­lade for not going with the Trump delu­sions; I believe some­where in what she is doing is a cal­cu­lus that her posi­tion will turn out to ben­e­fit her.
Liz Chaney per­pet­u­ates the lie that the Democratic ini­tia­tive which pro­tects peo­ple from the pan­dem­ic restores the econ­o­my, reforms the police, and fix­ing America’s infra­struc­ture, is socialism.
Give me a damn break. I thought those were the things the gov­ern­ment was sup­posed to do?
She has done noth­ing that Senator Mitt Romney has­n’t done; she has­n’t done any­thing that Illinois rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Kinsigner has­n’t done. She has­n’t done any­thing that Justin Amash has­n’t done.
Liz Chaney is the num­ber three per­son in the Republican House lead­er­ship cau­cus, which is in and of itself tes­ta­ment that Liz Chaney deserves no plaudits.

KAMALA HARRIS AMERICA IS NOT A RACIST COUNTRY

Oh, what a dif­fer­ence a few months make. Newly elect­ed Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris was asked whether she thought the United States is a racist country.
In typ­i­cal lib­er­al wishy-washy fash­ion, Harris retreat­ed from her for­mer posi­tion that America is indeed a racist coun­try, say­ing the fol­low­ing; “America is not a “racist coun­try,” but the nation must “speak the truth” about its his­to­ry with racism.”
Wait, what the f**k? What the hell does that even mean?
Harris was respond­ing to Black-skin folk US Senator uncle Tim/​Tom Scott of South Carolina who claimed that America is not a racist coun­try, even as he spoke about his fears, hav­ing being pulled over mul­ti­ple times by police for no oth­er rea­son than that he was a black man.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​w​h​y​-​d​o​-​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​n​s​-​h​a​t​e​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​p​e​o​p​le/

The com­mon thread that seems to guide both Tim Scott and Kamala Harris’s posi­tion, even from dif­fer­ent ends of the spec­trum, is that both of them man­aged to find a way to get to the top, which means that American racism has ended.
No mat­ter how hard you try to hold a bunch of ful­ly blown bal­loons under­wa­ter, a few will escape to the top; it is just the nat­ur­al order of things.
The hypocrisy of both Scott & Harris speaks to the greater issue of some black American mem­o­ry lapse as soon as they reach the top, until, of course, they are pushed back down the lad­der they try to claim their black card.
In a blog post last week, I addressed Tim Scott’s coon­ery; I will not rehash those comments.
But most who pay atten­tion to polit­i­cal cam­paigns will remem­ber Kamala Harris’s attack on Joe Biden when she famous­ly told him dur­ing one of the pres­i­den­tial debates that she was one of the lit­tle girls who ben­e­fit­ted from bussing, some­thing she said Biden opposed.
How can a rea­son­able per­son, much less a black per­son, claim that America is not a racist coun­try when racism is built into every stra­tum of society?
America’s racism was the tem­plate for Hitler’s treat­ment of the prac­ti­tion­ers of Judaism in Germany.
America’s racism was the tem­plate for South Africa’s apartheid sys­tem; It is the tem­plate for the apartheid sys­tem prac­ticed in the State of Israel today against the Palestinian people.
In every fiber of the American body-politic, racism is intri­cate­ly woven in with the implic­it desire of mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for peo­ple of col­or to have upward mobility.
The idea that because a few have made it America’s racist past is .….…a thing of the past is what guid­ed the US Supreme courts 2013 deci­sion in Shelby County Alabama Vs. Holder when the court gut­ted sec­tion 4 (b) of the 1965 vot­ing rights act.
The court’s log­ic was that the racist prac­tices of the past are in the past, and there­fore there was no fur­ther use for sec­tion 4(b).
Of course, as soon as the court hand­ed down that deci­sion, states run by Republicans embarked on vot­er sup­pres­sion laws only before seen dur­ing the peri­od after reconstruction.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 

Continue read­ing →

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law last week that offers legal pro­tec­tions for dri­vers who “unin­ten­tion­al­ly” kill or injure pro­test­ers if they are attempt­ing to “flee the scene.” House Bill 1674, which passed last week thanks to over­whelm­ing Republican sup­port, also makes it a mis­de­meanor offense to obstruct a road­way. The new law was passed in response to Black Lives Matter demon­stra­tions that took place in Oklahoma and much of the coun­try last sum­mer in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. “The 1^st Amendment gives us the right to peace­ably assem­ble, not unlaw­ful­ly assem­ble,” GOP state Rep. Kevin West, a spon­sor of the bill, told Yahoo News in an email. “The lan­guage [in H.B. 1674] gives equal pro­tec­tion to law­ful pro­test­ers as well as law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who get caught up in dan­ger­ous, unlaw­ful sit­u­a­tions.” Under the new law, any­one who obstructs a pub­lic road or high­way faces a mis­de­meanor charge pun­ish­able by up to a year in coun­ty jail and/​or a fine rang­ing from $100 to $5,000. Also, any dri­ver who “unin­ten­tion­al­ly” hits a demon­stra­tor with a car is grant­ed civ­il and crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty pro­tec­tion for injuries caused, includ­ing death, while “flee­ing from a riot.”

The bill’s lan­guage was inspired by an inci­dent last sum­mer in Tulsa in which the dri­ver of a pick­up truck drove through a crowd of peo­ple on Interstate 244 who were protest­ing Floyd’s death. The col­li­sion left sev­er­al peo­ple injured and one per­son par­a­lyzed from the waist down. The dri­ver of the pick­up truck, who had his fam­i­ly with him in the car, how­ev­er, was not charged. “The kids cow­ered in the back seat because they feared for their lives,” Sen. Rob Standridge, a Republican who authored H.B. 1674, told AP. “That’s what this bill is about.” “Hopefully every­thing qui­ets down around the coun­try, and this bill won’t be need­ed for any­body, but if things come to Oklahoma like have been hap­pen­ing, this will pro­tect some folks,” Standridge added in a record­ed video. Stitt and Standridge did not reply to Yahoo News’ request for com­ment. Similar bills are being pushed through Republican-led state­hous­es in oth­er parts of the coun­try. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an immu­ni­ty-grant­i­ng bill into law ear­li­er this month, and a mea­sure in Iowa is work­ing its way through the Legislature.

While pro­po­nents of the bill say H.B. 1674 will pro­tect those trapped by riots or demon­stra­tions, crit­ics believe the bill great­ly threat­ens Oklahomans’ right to peace­ful­ly protest and that it will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect Black peo­ple because it offers vague dis­cre­tion to dri­vers to assess whether a demon­stra­tion con­sti­tutes a threat. For Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, an Oklahoma native whose twin broth­er, Terence, was shot and killed by a Tulsa police offi­cer in September 2016 dur­ing a traf­fic stop, this bill is deeply per­son­al. H.B. 1674 “attacks and silences our right to assem­ble and protest and let our voic­es be heard,” Crutcher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, told Yahoo News in a video interview.

“It means so much to me because my twin broth­er … was killed by a white police offi­cer … and we had to take it to the streets to demand that jus­tice be served,” she said. “Because of our right to march down the streets and our right to assem­ble, we were able to force the dis­trict attor­ney to indict [Officer] Betty Shelby with­in the first week.” Shelby was charged with manslaugh­ter in Terence’s killing but was lat­er acquit­ted. Tiffany Crutcher believes bills like these con­tin­ue to put Black America in a “state of emer­gency.” “This bill was cre­at­ed in retal­i­a­tion for what took place for us shut­ting down high­ways and mak­ing them incon­ve­nient for just a moment [last sum­mer],” she said. For many peo­ple, H.B. 1674 brings to mind the death of Heather Heyer, a white woman who was killed after a man rammed his car into a crowd of coun­ter­pro­test­ers at an Aug. 12, 2017, “Unite the Right” ral­ly in Charlottesville, Va. James Alex Fields Jr. was even­tu­al­ly charged and con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der, but crit­ics note that if a law sim­i­lar to Oklahoma’s had been in place in Virginia at the time, he might have not faced any consequences.

Andrew Porwancher, a pro­fes­sor of legal his­to­ry at the University of Oklahoma, said he is con­cerned that the new law goes too far. “H.B. 1674 might appear to be a win for con­ser­v­a­tives, but its pro­vi­sions could be employed against right-wing activists in the future,” Porwancher said in an email to Yahoo News. “Your best shot at pre­serv­ing your own free­dom of speech tomor­row is to pro­tect the speech of your oppo­nents today.” In response to the new law, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a state­ment call­ing it an effort to “[tram­ple] the rights and lib­er­ties of Oklahomans in favor of those with the most pow­er and access.” The group believes the leg­is­la­tion is meant to dis­cour­age peo­ple from protest­ing alto­geth­er. “There is no ques­tion that this leg­is­la­tion chills free speech,” Nicole McAfee, direc­tor of pol­i­cy and advo­ca­cy at the ACLU of Oklahoma, told Yahoo News. “It remind­ed me who the Legislature thinks has a right to be afraid.”

McAfee said the Oklahoma Legislature too often cre­ates laws out of iso­lat­ed inci­dents, like the pick­up truck encounter on Interstate 244, with­out con­sid­er­ing the larg­er impli­ca­tions. “We know the pow­er of protest and pub­lic account­abil­i­ty in mov­ing folks to action, and bills like this not only put our democ­ra­cy in a frag­ile place, but laws like these put our insti­tu­tions in a dan­ger­ous place as well,” she said. But pro­po­nents of the law feel it pro­tects every­one involved. Don Spencer, pres­i­dent of the Oklahoma 2^nd Amendment Association, has been advo­cat­ing for laws like H.B. 1674 since February. “If you’re unlaw­ful­ly block­ing a road­way for the intend­ed pur­pose of pos­si­bly doing dam­age, to scare peo­ple, to harm peo­ple,” Spencer warned in a record­ed video ear­li­er this year, “you could be trod­den on with the car tires.” “There are mul­ti­ple ways to protest law­ful­ly and have your voic­es heard, but attack­ing motorists who have noth­ing to do with the protest or what is being protest­ed is not some­thing that should be allowed,” West, the state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said. H.B. 1674 will take effect on Nov. 1. Until then, the ACLU and oth­er grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions, like the Terence Crutcher Foundation, are try­ing to fig­ure out their next course of action. For Kathryn Schumaker, a pro­fes­sor affil­i­at­ed with the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, the new law takes the state back to a shame­ful era in its his­to­ry and ignores the issues at the cen­ter of the protests. “Civil rights pro­test­ers were his­tor­i­cal­ly described as ‘out­side agi­ta­tors’ who only want­ed to stir up trou­ble,” she told Yahoo News. “In my view, this law seeks to dis­tract from the mes­sage that pro­test­ers are try­ing to communicate.”

Police released footage of the events lead­ing up to the death of a Latino man in Alameda, California, show­ing offi­cers kneel­ing on the man’s back and shoul­der until he became unre­spon­sive. The video con­tra­dicts offi­cials’ orig­i­nal account of the inci­dent. Mario Gonzalez, a 26-year-old Latino man, died on the morn­ing of April 19 after what police claimed was a “scuf­fle” and “phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion” as they attempt­ed to restrain him, fol­lowed by a “med­ical emer­gency.” But body cam­era footage released on Tuesday after­noon after an out­cry from Gonzalez’s fam­i­ly and the pub­lic did not show him being vio­lent or fight­ing offi­cers at any point. Instead, in the video, offi­cers approached Gonzalez, who was stand­ing alone in a park with some bot­tles of alco­hol in a bas­ket. Gonzalez calm­ly spoke with offi­cers for near­ly nine min­utes before they attempt­ed to place his hands behind his back. Police pinned him face­down on the ground and at least two offi­cers appeared to get on top of his back, one kneel­ing on his shoul­der, for about five min­utes until Gonzalez became unre­spon­sive. Police said Gonzalez died at the hos­pi­tal, but the video showed that he had stopped breath­ing on-site and that one offi­cer declared “no pulse” short­ly after offi­cers began CPR.

Three offi­cers involved have been placed on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave. In a press con­fer­ence ear­li­er on Tuesday, mem­bers of Gonzalez’s fam­i­ly, who had pri­vate­ly viewed the footage, said Gonzalez was “com­pli­ant and they con­tin­ued to pin him down.” “Alameda police offi­cers mur­dered my broth­er Mario,” Gonzalez’s broth­er Gerardo said, not­ing that his broth­er was in the park “not both­er­ing any­one” and that “at no point was he vio­lent.” “Everything we saw in that video was unnec­es­sary,” he added. “APD took a calm sit­u­a­tion and made it fatal.” “Police killed my broth­er in the same man­ner that they killed George Floyd,” he said. In the video, Gonzalez could be heard groan­ing under the weight of the police offi­cers on top of him while he con­tin­ued to respond to their ques­tions about his name and birth date.