Post by ck4829 on Feb 16, 2022 18:35:55 GMT
DO black lives matter? PART 3: THE DEVALUATION OF BLACK PEOPLE IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
America’s criminal justice system has had a long history of not only not protecting the lives of Blacks, but has been complicit in violence against them, up to and including murder. South Carolina during the seventeenth century had more enslaved Africans than Whites. The constant fear of slave revolts led them to put into place voluntary slave patrols. Their task was to enforce the multitude of rules and regulations which controlled the daily lives of Blacks. Something as simple as moving beyond the plantation without a written pass led to severe punishment.
In 1671 Charleston S.C. deployed a night watch using constables and a rotation of citizens to patrol and keep a close watch on the enslaved Blacks. A 1696 law required all able-bodied White men to serve in these slave patrols, according to Sally E. Hadden’s, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The early patrols which the Africans called “paterollers,” would eventually become paid patrols in multiple states. South Carolina passed a law requiring they be paid in 1734. The 1739 Stono slave rebellion led to stricter slave codes, night watches and the conversion of these patrols effectively into the first police force in the nation. Eventually slave jails would be built to house runaways or Blacks wandering without passes.
By the time the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed, states began to give wide ranging authority to the patrollers to use whatever violence they saw fit to punish runaways or Blacks violating the strict rules that guided their every movement. They could enter the homes of Blacks and punish them in any way they saw fit. They were widely feared for the violent tactics they used. One enslaved man who ran away and was chased by the patrols decided to take drastic measures.
“At last, finding that he cannot escape, he ran into a blazing furnace and was burned to death rather than be caught and suffer the tortures that awaited him.” – WPA Slave Narratives Project
After the Civil War ended, laws known as Black Codes were written throughout the South. Some of these codes were simply vagrancy and loitering prohibitions which were only enforced against Black men and boys.
Due to the language of the Thirteenth Amendment, saying that slavery was legal as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” a system that forced Blacks back into slavery for being accused and convicted by their former enslavers developed. Douglas A. Blackmon wrote about this system in his book, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II. One of these new forms of enslavement was the convict lease system and debt slavery where Black men and boys were arrested, charged with a crime, forced to pay a fine and then sold to anyone who wanted free labor.
www.milwaukeeindependent.com/reggie-jackson/black-lives-matter-part-3-devaluation-black-people-criminal-justice-system/
America’s criminal justice system has had a long history of not only not protecting the lives of Blacks, but has been complicit in violence against them, up to and including murder. South Carolina during the seventeenth century had more enslaved Africans than Whites. The constant fear of slave revolts led them to put into place voluntary slave patrols. Their task was to enforce the multitude of rules and regulations which controlled the daily lives of Blacks. Something as simple as moving beyond the plantation without a written pass led to severe punishment.
In 1671 Charleston S.C. deployed a night watch using constables and a rotation of citizens to patrol and keep a close watch on the enslaved Blacks. A 1696 law required all able-bodied White men to serve in these slave patrols, according to Sally E. Hadden’s, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas.
The early patrols which the Africans called “paterollers,” would eventually become paid patrols in multiple states. South Carolina passed a law requiring they be paid in 1734. The 1739 Stono slave rebellion led to stricter slave codes, night watches and the conversion of these patrols effectively into the first police force in the nation. Eventually slave jails would be built to house runaways or Blacks wandering without passes.
By the time the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act was passed, states began to give wide ranging authority to the patrollers to use whatever violence they saw fit to punish runaways or Blacks violating the strict rules that guided their every movement. They could enter the homes of Blacks and punish them in any way they saw fit. They were widely feared for the violent tactics they used. One enslaved man who ran away and was chased by the patrols decided to take drastic measures.
“At last, finding that he cannot escape, he ran into a blazing furnace and was burned to death rather than be caught and suffer the tortures that awaited him.” – WPA Slave Narratives Project
After the Civil War ended, laws known as Black Codes were written throughout the South. Some of these codes were simply vagrancy and loitering prohibitions which were only enforced against Black men and boys.
Due to the language of the Thirteenth Amendment, saying that slavery was legal as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” a system that forced Blacks back into slavery for being accused and convicted by their former enslavers developed. Douglas A. Blackmon wrote about this system in his book, Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II. One of these new forms of enslavement was the convict lease system and debt slavery where Black men and boys were arrested, charged with a crime, forced to pay a fine and then sold to anyone who wanted free labor.
www.milwaukeeindependent.com/reggie-jackson/black-lives-matter-part-3-devaluation-black-people-criminal-justice-system/