I am super busy this week so blogging will be light. I wanted to share this poster that comes from the back page of a Black Panther Party newspaper from August 1, 1970. The poster includes artwork from Emory Douglas and a poem by Afeni Shakur, mother of Tupac.

After struggling for days to figure out how to post this terrific youth-created documentary, it’s finally up at Vimeo. I wrote about Nina and Keely’s film here.

Rodney King is dead.

“Can’t we all get along?” – These words have been the subject of ridicule and derision for two decades. Yet for me, the words embody something else altogether – agape love. Rodney King was speaking in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. when he expressed this sentiment. In Strength to Love (1963), MLK Jr. writes that:

“…we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbour, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves (Strength to Love, 1963).”

Though he probably didn’t consider himself to be a practitioner of transformative justice, I would contend that Rodney King certainly was. As one of my touchstones, archbishop Desmond Tutu often says: “We can only be human together.” Rodney King seems to have understood this fact on a profound level.

I have thought for years about how Rodney King must have felt to be ridiculed for his words particularly by other black people. Black people in this country have suffered an inordinate amount of oppression. This has led some of us to rage against the concept of meeting hate with love. I understand that. I often find myself struggling with the concept of agape love. I think that many of us got upset with King because he exposed our ambivalence about how to address the violence that is often directed at us. At a time when we were feeling so much anger and rage, we had someone who looked just like us admonishing us to react instead with love. It felt like too much in the moment. Perhaps it even felt like a betrayal of sorts.

At the crux of Rodney King’s “can’t we all get along” is an imploration to forgive. But on that day in 1992 so many of us didn’t want to forgive. We weren’t ready for it in large part because of what forgiveness expects from us. Once again, I turn to a quote by Desmond Tutu for some insight into the concept of forgiveness:

“Forgiveness gives us the capacity to make a new start… And forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew… In the act of forgiveness we are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to change.”

Many of us weren’t ready “to make a new start” when Rodney uttered his famous words. We were longing for Malcolm circa 1957 or Huey circa 1967. We wanted accountability for what had been done to him and what had been done to countless of us over the decades. We wanted “justice” and he was asking us to “enable the other person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.” It was too much for some of us.

Others were embarrassed by his compassion because it seemed to denote a sort of weakness in an oppressive world that perhaps demanded a different response. And Rodney was asking us to turn to our better angels when what we wanted was to rage against injustice. But what did MLK Jr have to say to us about this urge to meet violence with violence?

“If the American Negro and other victims of oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for freedom, future generations will be the recipients of a desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be the endless reign of meaningful chaos. (Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958)”

In his articulate inarticulate way, isn’t this really what Rodney King was saying to all of us on that day in 1992? I think so. Today, as I learned of his passing, I felt a sense of sadness overwhelm me. Frankly, I was surprised it. But perhaps I shouldn’t be. In his reaction to an unimaginable wrong (that most of us will never experience), this decent man stood before the world and declared in his own way that love is stronger than hate. Rest in power, Rodney, rest in power!

I am out of words today so I am going to let the brilliantly talented Daniel Beaty speak. If you’ve never heard this spoken word piece titled “Knock, Knock,” do yourself a favor and listen… Happy Father’s day to my dad, one of the greatest men I know.

I taught a college level black studies class some years ago and I assigned a letter written by a prisoner to my students. I wanted them to analyze the letter from the perspective of sociological theory. The letter comes a book called “Maximum Security: Letters from Prison” published in 1972 and edited by Eve Pell. All of the letters in the book were written to lawyers (mostly addressed to Fay Stender who I will write about in the next few days) by prisoners in the California Department of Corrections.

Today I want to share this letter on the blog. In just a few sentences, I think that California prisoner, Alfred Hassan, does more to explain why so many poor, black and brown people find themselves locked up than do many 200+ page ethnographic studies that I have read about the same topic. As I continue my exasperated commentary on Chicago’s “gang” violence in the press, I found it important to return to the letter this week.

Don’t be telling me what is right. You can talk that right jive, but where was you when my old man and the neighbors was teaching me how to steal and shoot dope? Where was you when me and my brothers and sisters was crazy and blind from hunger? Where was you when my mama was gambling away the welfare check? Where was you when the World was calling me a dirty nigger and a greasy Mexican and a poor white peckawood? Where was you when the cops was whipping me upside my head just because my skin was dark? Where was you when I was losing respect for your law and order? Where was you when Wrong was my only salvation?

I’ll tell you where you was. You was clear across town — Y’know, over there living in them big, fine houses — talking that trash about right and wrong. But check this out: There ain’t no such thing as right or wrong in my world. Can you dig? Right or wrong is what a chump chooses to tell himself. And I chose to tell myself that stealing is right. I had a choice: to be a poor-ass, raggedy-ass muthafucker all my life or to go out into the streets and steal me some money so I could buy me a decent pair of shoes to wear, or shoot me some dope so I could forget about the rat-and-roach infested dump I live in.

Yeah, I got a chip on my shoulder. But it didn’t get up there by itself. And it’s gonna stay up there until you eliminate the junky conditions that breed cats like me. Yeah, you gonna send me to the pen. But that ain’t no big thing because I’ve been in prison all my life. And if you think you can rehabilitate me by sending me to prison, then you are sadly mistaken. How do you rehabilitate a cat who has never been “habilitated”? There ain’t nothing to rehabilitate. I know why you’re sending me to the pen. You’re sending me there to be punished, to do some A’ems and P’ems. But, fool, don’t you know that you can’t get nothing down by throwing salt into my open wounds? And I want you to know one thing before I split. I ain’t ashamed of what I did or who I am. I’m me — dig. I’ve talked that talk, and now I’m ready to walk that walk…

Alfred Hassan

I have decided to launch a weekly feature on the blog where I share an artifact from my collection that is relevant to the PIC. I will do this on Fridays until the end of the year.

I’ll begin today by sharing a flier that was created by the Inez Garcia Defense Committee in the 1970s. I have written about Inez Garcia here.

There was a time in American history particularly before the Civil War when Irish children were the primary group branded as “criminal” and delinquent. It’s worth noting that when the New York House of Refuge opened in 1825 most of its inmates were white children and especially the Irish. Christopher M. Span (2002) explains that:

“By 1840, Irish children constituted half of the Refuge’s inmates. Between 1850 and 1855, their commitment rates soared to 63%; despite the fact that Irish immigration to the United States was on the decline (p.112).”

As new immigrants to New York City, the Irish were perceived to be “threats to the social order.” Their children were considered unruly and therefore came to the attention of authorities and reformers. The purpose of reformers in establishing the nation’s first juvenile reformatory (the New York House of Refuge) in 1825 was to exert social control over populations considered to be in need of supervision and assimilation. Ironically, it was Irish children’s white skin that helped to criminalize them in the early to mid-19th century.

Black children fell outside of the concern of early juvenile justice reformers in cities like New York. It wasn’t in fact until 1850 that the first House of Refuge opened in Philadelphia specifically for “colored” children. In New York, black children were a minority. Additionally, there is some evidence that black children were less likely to get into trouble with the law. Christopher M. Span (2002) sheds light on this reality:

“Persons interested in the reformation of children accused and found guilty of crime argued that the primary reason African American children in New York City rarely got into trouble with the law was because they had employment, no matter how menial (p.112-113).”

Yet there is much that we still don’t know about how juvenile justice applied to black youth in the 19th century. Even though it appears that black children were not heavily targeted as committing crimes in cities like New York in the early to mid-19th century, there are many outstanding questions as to why this was. If they were not disproportionately incarcerated in juvenile reformatories until the late 19th century perhaps they could be found in larger numbers in adult jails and prisons? Available research suggests that this may not have been the case.

Most black children in the United States before the Civil War were born slaves so therefore they would not be present in large numbers in “free” states. Yet even when they did form a significant minority in urban centers, it appears that they were less likely to come to the attention of authorities and reformers. This could possibly be attributed to the fact that reformers were most concerned about the moral character of white children and therefore it was more urgent to “reform” them so that they could take their rightful place as good citizens and future “white” leaders of the nation. Interestingly then, black children in some cities escaped the criminalization which would become more prevalent in the late 19th century. I am embarking on a major research project next year about the historical criminalization of black youth so stay tuned as I will hopefully have much more to share on this topic then.

For those who are interested in learning more about Houses of Refuge in the 19th century, I wrote about them here last year.

A young man named Flint Farmer was shot several times by a Chicago police officer last October while he was lying on his stomach in the grass. His father, Emmett Farmer, is seeking accountability since no charges have been filed against the police officer as of yet. I have been asked to share this petition that his father has created.

I write a lot about police violence on this blog and I am out of words today. But I did want to offer some inspiration to everyone who continues to resist police violence in Chicago. You should all know that you are by no means alone and also that you are part of a long and sustained campaign of resistance against this violence.

Below are several photographs from my personal collection depicting resistance to police violence in Chicago.

When I mention the name Martin Sostre, what comes to mind? For many, his name will conjure no images or words. Yet he was a man who made a real impact in terms of prisoner rights in the United States.

Martin Sostre was the owner of the Afro-Asian Bookstore in Buffalo, New York. On July 14, 1967, the police raided his store and arrested Sostre on “narcotics, riot, arson, and assault charges.” After the riot and arson charges were dropped, Sostre was tried by an all-white jury and convicted of selling $15 worth of heroin. He was given a sentence of 31 to 41 years in prison.

This short summary does not of course do justice to Martin Sostre nor to his legacy. Prior to the 1967 police raid, Sostre had already spent a dozen years between 1952 and 1964 locked inside Attica prison on a narcotics conviction. He was known to the police in Buffalo and suspicion surrounded him because he had converted to Islam (in the 50s while he was incarcerated) and was also outspoken against the injustices of racial and class oppression.

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“I cannot submit to injustices, even minor ones. Once one starts submitting to minor injustices and rationalizes them away, their accumulation creates a major oppression. That’s how entire peoples fell into slavery.” (Sostre, letter to B, 1974)

Note: I will be writing more in depth about Martin Sostre tomorrow. His is a name that should be more well-known IMO.