In 1989, George Bush gave a speech about crack. During the speech he pulled out a bag of crack and said “this bag was seized right across the street from the White House in Lafayette park.” Turns out, his speech writers had the idea to pull out a prop during his speech and in order to make it believable they had the DEA plant crack on this random 18 year old black kid. They lured him there. He didn’t even know where the White House or Lafayette park was. When he got there, they arrested them. The plot was discovered by a journalist.
What journalist
Gary Webb
And then Gary Webb killed himself after he revealed that the CIA let crack infiltrate black communities through drug cartels making deals with the CIA. His wife left him and his career was ruined for exposing the drug war as a war against people of color.
There’s a really well done movie called Kill the Messenger (x) I suggest everyone should watch. It was done in partnership with his family and details the events from beginning to end.
Do we know the name of the “random 18 year old black kid” who was framed by the United States Government for a crime he didn’t commit?
Update: His name is Keith Jackson. He has a wife and family now, and lives in the Baltimore/DC area. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t want anything to do with what happened to him. The charges against him for the Lafayette case were dropped, but he received a 121 month sentence for distributing drugs near a school. Keith Jackson was a senior in high school when he was arrested. He was released from prison in 1998, 10 years later. We have to remember all of the time that was taken from him. We have to remember that he wasn’t just “some random 18 year old black kid.” The government chose him to become a caricature of who they wanted the “enemy” to be in the War on Drugs because he is Black. Remember Webb’s thesis. Remember Keith Jackson’s name. Remember his story.
