Police Brutality: The Origin Story — PT 1

The Black Lives Matter movement has consumed mainstream consciousness; bringing on a reckoning with police brutality. News outlets and social media have barraged the public with information, which only presents pieces of the bigger picture. So, while most agree that police brutality should end, the 'how' is not as clear. To answer that, we need to start at the beginning. This episode will lay out the historical context of police brutality; starting from America's original sin.

Resources Mentioned:

• The New Jim Crow (book)
• Slavery By Another Name (book)
• Policing the Black Man (book)

Transcript

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In this episode host Anita Kirti traces the origins of police brutality and answers some of the questions we face in America right now. Why, in 2020, after decades of police brutality, did mainstream media decide that the deaths of Black people were worth fighting for? Understanding the historical, political, and racial context of this moment will give us a good idea of where the Black Lives Matter movement should go from here and what parts of the conversation we're missing.


3 Key Points:

1.   Race was constructed by the plantation elite in the late 1600s and it became a crucial part in the founding of America.

2.   In 1865 the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery. With this disruption to racial hierarchy white supremacy outlasts the institution it was made for.

3.   You see overt white supremacy convert into a colorblind white supremacy for 100 years.

Episode Highlights: 

• In the late 1600s society was broken into a few groups. There were white elites, poor white people, indentured servants, and people from the West Indies who were enslaved.
• Labor was mostly done by indentured servants. As plantations grew, owners realized they had a labor shortage. After Bacon's Rebellion, the plantation elite decided that they needed labor they could control.
• First, they started enslaving people from Africa because they didn't know English. Then they extended the racial bribe, extending privileges to poor white people such as more access to Native American lands and the ability to conduct slave patrols. This is the origin of racial hierarchies in America.
• Race becomes a crucial part of the founding of America.
• In 1865 the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished. The structure of slavery was taken down but white supremacy was the value that held it up.
• In the South, their infrastructure was falling apart, they were in debt to the North, and their labor was gone. The racial hierarchy had been disrupted.
• Within a year, they passed the Black Codes, a set of laws that again subjugated Black people. These laws essentially recreated slavery.
• At the same time, the Klu Klux Klan was founded and terrorized communities.
• The KKK consisted of government officials, businessmen, plantation owners, and other "respectable" people in the community.
• The North repealed the Black Codes in 1866 and they sent down federal troops to investigate the KKK in 1871. They shut down their reign of violence by 1872. The North passed the 14th and 15th Amendments as part of Reconstruction.
• During Reconstruction, Black people made some strides. They were given public schools and the Federal Government established the Freedmen's Bureau. They also held public office.
• In the early 1870s Northerners started losing interest in Reconstruction and white supremacy began to rise in the North.
• The 13th Amendment provided the South with a loophole to get their labor force back. If they criminalized Black people, they could be legally enslaved. They reinvent slavery in the name of the convict leasing system.
• They set up numerous laws to purposely entrap and target Black people. First, they created vagrancy laws which made it illegal to not have a job. Second, they would charge Black men with false crimes then put them through long trials so they'd accumulate debt to the court.
• The state began leasing Black people out to industry as cheap labor. 
• They estimate that 25% of Black men who were convicts at the time would die and industries were notorious for having burial sites alongside work sites.
• 200,000 convicts were pushed into the convict leasing system up until the 1920s.
• They also created the second racial bribe. State legislators passed the Jim Crow laws, which segregated the population.
• The Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson signed off on these segregation laws. By 1900 the South was fully segregated. 
• Black men were segregated from fighting with other soldiers in World War II which brought international criticism. 
• In 1915, the KKK restarted. Even more so than before, the KKK was mainstream. The end of the second era of the KKK is 1925.
• In the 1940s Supreme Court decisions started chipping away at segregation.
• In Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Supreme Court officially made an anti-segregation verdict.
• Brown is a watershed moment because the Supreme Court re-entered the politics of the South. This marks the beginning of the civil rights movement.
• After this landmark case, the KKK resurged and state legislatures pushed through more Jim Crow laws.
• In the 1950s and 60s you saw the work of major civil rights leaders. In 1963, JFK announced the Civil Rights Bill. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.
• These bills reinforce rights that were already given in the 1860s. Black people experienced 100 years of suppression following the end of slavery.
• White supremacy was persistent, planned, and pervasive through the late 1800s.
• The civil rights movement was not the end of white supremacy.