Angela J. Davis (ed.) - Policing the Black Man

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sam DuBose, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and Terence Crutcher are just some of the names on a long list of unarmed black boys and men who were killed by police officers in recent years. Although black men have been the victims of violence at the hands of the state since the time of slavery, technology and social media now permit us to literally bear witness to many of these killings, repeatedly. Millions of people have watched the video of a police officer choking Eric Garner to death as he struggled for air. Similarly, millions have watched the video of a police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back as he ran for his life. Who can ever forget the grainy footage of Tamir Ricethe twelve-year-old boy who was shot by a police officer while he played alone with a toy gun in a park near his home? Two videosone from a police helicopter and another from a police dashboard camerashow Terence Crutcher walking away from police officers with his hands raised high in the air just before he was shot and killed. These images have evoked feelings of fear, sadness, and outrage and serve as a reminder that the lives of black men and boys continue to be devalued and destroyed with impunity at the hands of the state. To date, not one of the police officers who killed these men and boys has been convicted of a single crime.

From the arrival of the first slaves in Jamestown in 1619 to the lynchings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present dayblack boys and men have been unlawfully killed by those who were sworn to uphold the law and by vigilantes who took the law into their own hands. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened its doors on September 24, 2016, includes exhibits that tell the story of many of these killings. Yet these killings are not just a part of African American history. They have continued well into the twenty-first centuryalmost four hundred years after the beginning of slaveryand persist with remarkable frequency and brutality during a time when America elected its first African American president.

Many of these race-based killings have inspired and reinvigorated movements for change. The brutal killing of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in 1963, and the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 all serve as markers on the civil rights movement timeline, as did so many other killings of black men by white racists. Each tragic killing sparked nationwide protests and renewed activism in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice in the United States.

The killing of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 was a pivotal marker of racial violence against black men in the twenty-first century. Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a white man who called the police when he saw Martin walking in his neighborhood. Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood crime watch group, reported to the police that Martin looked suspicious and that he looked like he was up to no good or on drugs or something. Ignoring the dispatchers warning that he should not follow Martin, Zimmerman ultimately shot and killed him. Martin was unarmed and was on his way back to his fathers house after buying snacks at a local convenience store. Initially Zimmerman was not even charged with a crime, but after nationwide protests, he was charged with Martins murder. A jury ultimately acquitted him.