Edit: Concerning the dates at the end of this post, this is in fact an older repost meant to educate our newer followers!
In order to fully fight the evils of our present, we must first educate ourselves on the past. We’ve talked about this before, but the police were originally created as a slave patrol to maintain the institution of slavery. This system was never built to truly protect us. And as the decades passed as more laws and amendments were being passed, the police still managed to find ways to marginalized Black Indigenous, People of Color alongside other minorities. This history must and should be known by the American people, if not the world.
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[ID: Six Lessons in History on Police Brutality
(Sources linked throughout image description)
Slave Patrols (1700-1856)
Local authorities throughout America established slave patrols to maintain the system of slavery. These slave patrols were one of the earliest and most prolific forms of early policing.
Slave patrols served 3 main functions:
To chase down, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners
To provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts
To maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to swift justice
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through “Jim Crow’” laws.
The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage, ordered business owners to keep their Black and white clientele separated, and prevented Black and white students from attending the same schools.
Enforcing Jim Crow laws was part of the police’s job. Black people who defied Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and death at the hands of police.
Suffragists dubbed their treatment on Nov. 14, 1917 as the “Night of Terror.” Male guards at the Northern Virginia prison forced suffragists to stand all night, and one in particular had her arm twisted behind her back and was slammed twice over the back of an iron bench.
Suffragists were arrested for protesting for the right to vote on Nov. 10, 1917. The women were clubbed, beaten, and tortured by guards at the Occoquan Workhouse.
The police warned the women that they would be arrested if they continued. Nevertheless, they persisted.
In March 1918, the D.C. Court of Appeals declared that all the suffragist arrests had been unconstitutional.
On March 7, 1965, known as “Bloody Sunday,” police used billy clubs, whip, and tear gas to attack hundred of civil rights protesters marching from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery.
Marchers were protesting the denial of voting rights to African Americans as well as the murder of 26-year-old activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was fatally shot by police during a peaceful protest just days before.
Images of police brutally suppressing peaceful activists in part helped usher in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and sex.
Gay Liberation (1950-1970s)
In the 1950′s, being trans or gay was illegal, and police upheld this law by targeting LGBT communities.
Law enforcement officers regularly raided gay bars, brutalizing and arresting patrons. These bars were meant to be safe spaces where LGBTQ+ people could openly be and celebrate themselves, yet they were forcibly removed and beaten as a result.
Police also patrolled gay neighborhoods, waiting to storm into the homes of gay couples to arrest them for engaging in consensual sex. They would even pretend to look for gay partners, then arrest them when they got together.
Black Lives Matter (2013-Now)
Amnesty International has documented 125 incidents of police violence against Black Lives Matter protesters in just a 10-day period from May 26 to June 5, 2020. Among the abuses documented are beatings, the misuse of tear gas, and the firing of rubber bullets.
This past Sunday (when this was original posted), police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot Jacob Blake multiple times in the back. Protests broke out in Kenosha shortly after Blake was shot. Police clashed with demonstrators, and fire tear gas to disperse them. The police even gave Kyle Rittenhouse water and thanked his armed group before Rittenhouse killed two protesters.
Just because the police are “upholding the law” doesn’t mean the law is just.
The police have a history of terrorizing marginalized communities, and the police will continue terrorizing marginalized communities.
Defunding or abolishing the police is not radical. It is a stance for human rights.
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