IS THE GUN THE NEW NOOSE? Introduction
Charles Martin, William Steen, Mack Segars, Lacquan McDonald, Oscar Grant, and Corey Jones are all black, and all have either been killed by the noose of a lynch mob or the gun of a police officer. They are just six of the thousands of black men killed by the hands of a white man. Some have concluded that history is just repeating self when in actuality, history has never stopped. The black community is still trying combat oppression. There are still protestors but instead of being called a “civil –rights movement” it is now called the “Black Lives Matter” movement. As camera phones have become more popular, the killings of innocent blacks has gotten more attention. This research will assess how the noose
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This act was performed using a noose, which is a rope with a loop and a knot. At one end of the rope would be the knot and loop and on the other end would be someone holding the remainder of the rope. During the lynchings the black person would have their hands tied and the noose would be placed over their neck. Then in a hang-man fashion their body would be hoisted up and the weight of their body would pull the slip-knot tightening the rope around their neck. The cause of death is usually suffocation but in some extreme cases the neck would actually snap causing the victim to die. One of the most forgotten individuals who conducted research on the noose and lynchings was Ida B. Wells Barnett.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett is a historical black figure often overlooked until recently (Green & Gabbidon, 2000). She investigated the ideas of the “unwritten law” and the “lynch law” (Green and Gabbidon, 2000). The “unwritten laws” were laws not written in any book or enforced by national government, but they were rules expressed by white supremacist to oppress the black community. According to Green and Gabbidon “The term lynch law [was] used to refer to the infliction of punishment by private and unauthorized citizens” (Green and Gabbidon,
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In New Orleans there was a mob lynching in response to a shootout between officers Mora and Cantrelle along with two black men, Robert Charles and Leonard Pierce (Green and Gabbidon, 2000). Wells Barnett stated Charles and Pierce were victims of police brutality (Green and Gabbidon, 2000). Charles killed Officer Mora and Pierce was shot and taken into custody. Charles was a wanted man for fleeing the scene and that was when the lynch mob formed in New Orleans (Green and Gabbidon, 2000). It was a four day man-hunt before Charles was spotted and shot multiple times.
Comparing that scenario to today’s headlining stories of police brutality, one can suggest that the problem never went away. It was simply ignored until concrete proof surfaced to support the claim of police misconduct. The concrete proof needed was video footage, and thanks to modern technology and the age of camera phones, the idea police brutality against blacks has resurfaced. Though the proof needed to support the claim is now available, the brutal act police mistreatment has continued
Police
Southern Horrors Lynch Law in All Its Phases Book Review Da B. Wells-Barnett has written the book under review. The book has been divided into six chapters that cover the various themes that author intended to fulfill. The book is mainly about the Afro-Americans and how they were treated within the American society in the late 1800s. The first chapter of the book is “the offense” band this is the chapter that explains the issues that have been able to make the Afro-American community to be treated in a bad way by the whites in the United States in the late 1800s.
The shooting footage of Keith Lamont Scoot forms part of an outgoing debate on race and abuse of power. Recently, the shooting of black people in the U.S by the police is causing a lot of protests. But, what are the reasons that are leading to this crisis? Is it because of race? To take a posture in this situation is difficult because there is not enough information released and the judicial process of these cases are mostly carried out in secret by the police.
“Over the last 500 years people of different race, especially African Americans, have encountered a pattern of state sanctioned violence and civil and human rights abuse. To enforce capitalist exploitation and racial oppression the government and its police, courts, prisons, and military have beaten, framed, murdered and executed private persons, and brutally repressed struggles for freedom, justice, and self-determination. (Sundiata,1)”. Because of this African Americans began to fight back against the beating of their race with riots. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and more recently the Black Life Matters movement have placed emphasis on shedding light on how people are being treated and what can be done to get rectify everything that is wrong with how our government and police
There have been many cases revolving around lynching. For instance, the famous case of Emmit Till, a young African American boy brutally murdered. Before the murder, Till decided to whistle at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Consequently, little did Till know that the funny joke of a whistle would cause him great misery and agony. On the night of the tragedy, two men, Roy Bryant, and J.W. Milam, went to Till’s granduncle's house looking for Till.
Race relations has influenced the slaying of many blacks in modern America. George Zimmerman’s slaying of Trayvon Martin, a black teen, he approaches as he walked home in the rain with a bag of Skittles. Black communities in the United States spent much of late March of 2012 expressing outrage about Zimmerman’s actions and the Sanford, Florida, police department’s
In recent news we have seen massive riots following the killings of African American men by caucasian police officers. These all follow after one of the most prominent not guilty verdicts of the 21st century on the Rodney King beating. With these riots we see the words of Teju Cole begin to take life.
The crimes committed by the police against black men are acts of injustices. The unarmed black men that were killed in this year were either mentally ill, socially economic disadvantage, or both. This correlation reveals that the police targets were Black men of lower social status. The evidence is clear that some police law-enforcement tactics like traffic stops, targets black men.
Historians should interpret and disperse the first-hand accounts that are compiled into the book 100 Years of Lynchings, to help Americans understand exactly what happened from 1865 to the late 1900s. These accounts are written from a variety of stand points, allowing for a wide array of opinions. The majority of the
It was July 5, 2016 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A man named Alton Sterling was selling CD’s outside of the Triple S Food Market. A homeless man approached him and asked Alton for money. Alton showed the man his gun, and told the man to leave him alone. The men called 911, the police officers showed up, and soon after gunshots fired.
On January 18, 1982 the headlines read “WIDOW STABBED TO DEATH” of the small town local newspaper read just one day after the body of prominent wealthy white widow Dorothy Edwards was found in the bedroom closet of her home in the upscale neighborhood in Greenwood, South Carolina. “Most of Greenwood’s murders were in the black neighborhood- blacks killing blacks in barroom brawls, over money or a woman, or in domestic disputes. The perpetrator was usually caught quickly, often with a gun or knife still in his possession. Those crimes didn’t particularly disturb the white community. This one did!”
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black boys people blamed in Alabama for assaulting two white ladies on a train in 1931. The cases from this occurrence managed prejudice and the privilege to a reasonable trial. The cases incorporated a lynch swarm before the suspects had been arraigned, every white jurie, surged trials, and problematic crowds. It is refered to as an illustration of a general unnatural birth cycle of equity in the United States legitimate framework.
Another was the death of a 60-year-old black man named John Dukes, who was killed by whites in revenge for Dukes shooting a white constable. Dukes was hanged and even set on fire by the mob. Because of these events, and many other previous ones, Senator Wagner requested that the federal government do something. However, the Attorney General said that they could not become involved in state government issues, unless the federal government allowed it. What was even more disappointing was the fact that no anti-lynching bill had been passed on the federal level.
This will show how police brutality has affected black communities and how African American communities’ have responded to it with movements and protest, and how they try to overcome
“The Forgotten Dead” written by authors Carrigan, William D and Webb, Clive is a book about the mob violence against Mexicans in the U.S from 1848-1928. This book in an attempt to figure out who these women and men were, why they were lynched and by who, when these events occurred and where, and most importantly, why were their deaths forgotten. The Forgotten Dead provides substantial evidence of how such a violent period could have occurred and why it was over looked by so many in history. Webb and Carrigan contend that mob violence against Mexicans was forgotten because it was never fully studied, lynching’s were divided amongst black and white ethnicities, and there was an enormous amount of animosity towards the Mexican population at the
Everytime a black male dies, their family members go on the news to spread awareness. Seeing broken, childrenless mothers and fathers brings out an emotion of sorrow in the audience. We try to imagine what it may be like, but the heartbreak of losing a loved one is too much for us to bear. The movement logically identifies the statistics and facts of the typical African American’s fate. Between the years of 1999 and 2014, 76 unarmed individuals were killed by police officers.