"The NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall knew that, in the white supremacist Southern courts of the mid-20th Century, any black man accused of sexually violating a white woman was certain to be found guilty. "(Cerf) As a result this is what happened in the case of the Groveland four. This statement can be supported, according to the multiple killings of black men in the South of North America. Many individuals (especially white people) claimed that any black man who violated a white woman, that black man would have severe consequences and would be given a punishment, such as going to prison, or even possibility of death.…
While reading Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice & Redemption I was faced to realize not everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Ronald Cotton is an African American male who was labeled guilty the moment an officer saw him. He was denied many chances to prove his innocence in the criminal justice system. He spent eleven years in prison for a crime he did not commit.…
I think the black people were actually forced into involuntary servitude instead of the more patriotic-sounding form of selective service that they chose to enact. It is another example of what Katheryn Russell-Brown states in The Color of Crime, “Study after study shows that Blacks and Whites hold contrary viewpoints about the fairness of the criminal justice system. Blacks are more likely to believe that the justice system works against them, and Whites are more likely to believe that the justice system works for them. ” (Brown 39).…
The case was first heard in Scottsboro Alabama. The trials were rushed, and all of the men (besides twelve-year-old Roy Wright) got sentenced to death. In all of the trials, there were only white juries. So it makes sense why all of the trials went by quick. Without physical evidence, they got sentenced to death.…
After centuries of slavery, oppression, and human rights violations, Africans Americans still endure racial prejudice, racial profiling, and police brutality. Even though there are people that make a living by arguing the contrary, being black is not easy in a majority white America. During a time of racial tensions and divisions, it is noteworthy understand the similarities between Citizen and The Mexican Flyboy that illustrate the adversity that African Americans face in their lives in order to demonstrate the ongoing prejudice and racism in America. According to both texts, a black individual is more like to be stopped by the police, perceived to be a criminal, charged for a crime that a white person would not be in a similar situation,…
It 's hard to believe that there was a time in American history where certain human beings had few rights because of their color or gender. These individuals were considered possessions, mistreated and abused in the most horrific ways. No rights, no humanity and pushed to the brink. Cornered into a position where concern for laws and a future no longer seem to matter. All was hopeless, no where to turn and completely powerless to make a choice or consider options.…
Michael Katz’s article, “The Death of Shorty” highlighted many modern issues concerning racism, structural inequality and flaws in the justice system. The article was written in the perspective of Michael Katz, a jury member in the Manes trial. In the trial, Herbert Manes was accused of stabbing Robert Monroe to death on West Oakland Street in North Philadelphia. Manes was incarcerated for ten months before this trial, and it took the jury less than 90 minutes to conclude that he was not guilty due to self-defence. Both males were African American, worked in the informal economy, and lived in poor neighbourhoods.…
The Injustice of Trayvon Martin It’s what you see everywhere, it’s what you’ll hear anywhere: it’s racism. In the 2010s, racism was still prevalent despite how far the United States had come from slavery. On February 26, 2012, a white neighborhood watchman shot and killed and unarmed 17-year-old. George Zimmerman, the watchman, claimed self-defense against the black teenager; he was never arrested.…
Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, and many more have joined a category of African American people, who have been unjustly slain. Although, their murders have been highly publicized, caused uproars and inspired movements such as #blacklivesmatter, the people in this category have received little to no justice. It appears that we are seeing more and more African American lives taken. The fact that most of these murders are at the hands of white police officers or vigilantes calls to question whether the slave master has earned a badge and if he swapped his whip for a gun. These homicides are a modern-day mechanism for social control of African Americans.…
Police Brutality and Racial Disparities Introduction Police brutality against African Americans is a widely discussed topic across the states. However, what cause the police to be so? Why do they use excessive and deadly force against them? And is it really only about African Americans or does the other ethnicities encounter the same problem?…
America has strongly founded itself upon being a multicultural nation, yet still racism has been and still continues to be an issue. Race and discrimination is amongst the most controversial topics discussed today. There has been steps taken to eliminate racism for example the Civil Right Movement which sought to improve the rights of African Americans, but even these improvements were not instantaneous. Decades later we see that racism still continues to have a strong presence in our society. John Edgar Wiedman is a writer who used his literature to expose these issues.…
The only means of escape from this was for a black person to procure a signed by military officials and confirmed by a respected white citizen. In the weeks this the troops killed upwards of two hundred black people. Like the grandfather clause, the requirement of an official document signed and sealed by white people was a way of making a law that seemed reasonable from the white view point but in actuality was a poorly veiled attempt at racial segregation and racism. Following these murders and arrests on the part of the troops the faux trial began. The grand jury who presided of the cases was made up of white landlords and merchants and this group decided which people would be indicted and which would be set free.…
All it took was an accusation from a white to destroy the life of an innocent black. Legal slavery in the United States ended in 1865, but African Americans were still treaty unfairly by many white Southerners. “During the Depression, many blacks were fired or laid off for periods of time,” (Growing Up Black ). One of the good things for blacks during this period was that there were places in the South where poor, working class blacks could go to live until they could afford to purchase their own homes. These places were small, but they had everything they needed to survive.…
Many black people today are falsely accused of committing crimes, being pulled over by police officers simply because of their skin color, and given jail time of 20+ years, for petty crimes. Cases as such includes the Sandra Bland Case, where an African-American female was pulled over and drug out of her vehicle by police officers because she did not put on her blinkers when turning. She eventually died and it still remains unknown as to what actually killed her. Another case, is the Trayvon Martin case. Trayvon Martin, an African-American male in his teens, was walking down a neighborhood in an all-black hoodie, when he was approached by a white male for no reason and eventually was shot and killed.…
“Black Lives Matter” Movement & Police Brutality As much as the subjects of “Black Lives Matter” and police brutality are getting stale and cliché, unfortunately it is still an issue that will not be corrected by hushed complaints and sweeping under the rug. However, this problem is not brand new; it has only escalated. Racial discrimination began in the times of slavery and has been an issue since—well forever. The discrimination has been toughest on minorities—like the African-American community. Along with the racial discrimination from society itself, some police and law enforcement figures have often abused their power and taken advantage of their place in the majority race.…