Subjection

The Systems Army Many would agree that the modern police department is an evolution of nineteenth century groups, such as the White Citizens Council, the KKK, Slave patrols, and the lynch mob. All these groups have a history of protecting the white man from the so-called savage black man. Southern whites believed that blacks were detrimental to society and needed to be constantly put in their place. This was usually done violently and often resulted in death for some unsuspecting black man. Many blacks have constantly lived in this fear of the white mans ability to oppress the black man or make sure that the he remains in his proper place. From 1957 to 1965, many blacks have resisted the onslaught of police brutality in numerous ways and petitioned for a change in the actions of police officers toward them. Blacks have mostly protested the police brutality that occurred in the black community. Blacks have also looked for help from the federal and local government. As a last resort, blacks have reacted in self-defense violently, which has also led to urban riots. Blacks have had to live in fear for their lives when dealing with the police for many years and that feeling of safety still is not a complete reality. Blacks living in urban or rural areas have been subjected to brutality by the organization that is supposed to protect citizens. From the beginning of the century, Blacks have done what they could to resist the onslaught of police brutality. In Detroit, Michigan in 1957 the NAACP registered numerous complaints of police brutality against city police officers. As the numbers of police brutality cases began to rise, the leaders in the Black community demanded to see things change. In 1959 Herbert A. Greenwood, the only Black member of the city of Los Angeles police commission, resigned. The black residents cried out to Greenwood about the increasing number of black arrests and police violence. Police brutality was a very common phenomenon to all Americans, white or black, by 1960. This was due to the mass media and the beginning of the sit-in movement among students throughout the South. Police arrested these students, gassed, and beat them with Billy clubs regularly. Newspapers, radio, and television programs captured the torture of these young adults and broadcast the scenes to the world. In June 1960, NAACP officials, Thurgood Marshal, Roy Wilkins, and Clarence Mitchell insisted that the Justice Department investigate and help to reverse the rising number of police brutality cases in Southern cities and towns. As police brutality increased all over the country, Blacks wanted to see this raging fire extinguished. On the twelfth of January 1961, Mayor Louis Miriani of Detroit ordered an investigation of the local police department. Many viewed this act as a smoke screen; nothing was done to help blacks in dealings with the police. Some minimal gains have been achieved in the fight against police brutality in the black community. A black man named James Monroe won a Supreme Court decision, in early 1961, that allowed for Monroe to sue city police in federal court. Police dragged Monroe and his family out of bed naked and called racial slurs. In July 1961, NAACP officials in Atlanta, Georgia conducted their own investigation into police brutality. In Houston, Texas over five hundred blacks protested police brutality and harassment by

marching on city hall. Police brutality even began to become an international issue. After police assaulted a Guinean man, African and Asian delegates to the United Nations filed a grievance, on September 1, 1961, with the Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, they were protesting the racial discrimination and prejudice experienced by African and Asian diplomats. In Washington D.C. November 7, 1961, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported that blacks lived in fear of the police in the South and that they filed a disproportionate number of police brutality cases. Officials tried to curb the increasing rate of police brutality by conducting investigations, of police brutality. In 1962 the NAACP once again filed a charge of police brutality, which motivated the FBI to investigate. On September 6, 1962 a group of Mississippi blacks appeared before the State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to protest police brutality and voter and employment discrimination. Police brutality was the number one thing that many blacks feared in 1964. Mississippi was considered to be the worse place to live if you were black in the year of 1964. Mississippi was voted, by the associated press, the most violent state toward blacks in the union. Blacks continued time and time again to express their resentment over the way police officers treated blacks. In June 1964 Father Clayton Hewett was rushed from the jail in Chester, Pennsylvania to the local hospital due to his fast in protest of police brutality in the local area. As more and more blacks began to protest inequality and organize nonviolent direct action campaigns, more and more cases of police brutality were reported. In August 1964 a riot broke out in Philadelphia, Penn. There were no deaths, although hundreds were injured. Investigators concluded that the major cause of the riot was police brutality. The year 1965 was a very significant year for the Civil Rights Movement. Civil Rights leaders continued to try to end police brutality. In March, in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a boycott of Alabama products. The objective of the boycott was to end police brutality and force officials to register at lease fifty percent of eligible black voters. Obviously, the brutality did not stop; neither did blacks', resistance. Throughout the country, police brutality continued to be a major problem for blacks. The Reverse Freedom Rides held in northern cities attempted to solve the problem of police brutality by calling for a civilian police review board to police the police. In Jackson, Mississippi jailed civil rights activist complained of concentration camp violence inflicted upon them by police while jailed. Things only got worse as blacks began to respond violently to police brutality. In Los Angeles, California a large riot erupted in the Watts district in August of 1965. The riot began when a black man was pulled over by a state trooper for drunk driving. Thirty-seven people were killed and 3.934 people were arrested. Violent eruptions were not confined to the West Coast cities; people in other areas of the country also reacted with violence when violence was inflicted upon them. In Jonesboro and Bogalusa, Louisiana, an organization was established after the Ku Klux Klan, during civil rights marches, attacked black schoolchildren and civil rights activists. In December 1964, the Deacons of Defense and Justice were organized by blacks to protect themselves from white violence. This was a group of heavily armed blacks that patrolled black neighborhoods to protect them against white attacks. The group was developed because of police brutality and the lack of protection from law enforcement officials in the Jonesboro and Bogalusa area. As a last resort, many blacks decided to fight fire with fire, and take up arms against a common enemy who relentlessly targeted blacks.

In conclusion, blacks living during antebellum times feared being caught by a slave patrol, and later of being lynched by a mob. During the 1950s and 1960s blacks still had the same types of fears in their hearts, but toward a different entity. This time the fear was generated by the police department. Based on the astronomical numbers of police brutality cases reported from 1957 to 1965, it is obvious that these police officers were not in the business of protecting blacks at all. The only logical conclusion is that the modern police force was in the business of protecting an American racial system characterized by inequality, injustice, and discrimination. The police force that was responsible for all those examples of police brutality was also the force that kept blacks subjected to racial violence and oppressed by whites. These officers took orders from politicians and government officials and became the strong arm of those elements in society that did not want to see blacks gain their civil rights, and especially did not want to see blacks use their rights. The modern police department functioned as the army or enforcers of the biased, racist, and corrupted American social system of injustice and inequality. These officers were fighting a war, which if they won would perpetuate the white way of life (superior to blacks) and if they lost, it would kill their long-standing status as enforcers of white law of this nation. And all those blacks who were arrested and beaten or lost their lives to trigger happy cops, during riots, or marching for the civil rights cause, these people should be considered prisoners of war and casualties during the war for liberty and freedom.