Between 1892 and 1940, over 3,000 people, overwhelmingly black (2600), were lynched in the U.S. In the 1890s, black women led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, protested lynching and gave birth to a massive anti-lynching movement. The NAACP made lynching a cornerstone of its racial justice campaign when it was founded in 1909. In the 1920,the NAACP began to push for federal anti-lynching legislation through the Dyer bill. The NAACP tried to pass the bill for 20 years and relied heavily on black and white women to push this effort. Women were central to anti-lynching activism. As Mary Jane Brown (2003) writes black and white women activists “headed committees, raised money, rallied supporters, testified in congressional hearings, and acted in key advisory roles in a cooperative interracial relationship (p.379).” Some of the key black women who led the anti-lynching crusade were Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Burroughs, Hallie Q. Brown, Addie W. Hunton, Daisy Lampkin, Mary B. Talbert, and many others. Some of the white women who were anti-lynching activists included Mary Maclean, Harriet Stanton Blatch, Anna Garlin Spencer, Susan Wharton. Lenora O’Reilly, Mary White Ovington, Lillian Wald, Mary E. Wooley, and others.

Since 1920 was an election year, the NAACP tried to get Republican candidate Warren G. Harding to support the Dyer bill. Over the years, thousands of letters poured into various Presidents about lynching. Below is a letter from Ara Lee Settle to Warren G. Harding regarding lynching dated 06/18/1922 from the National Archives. The letter was part of a campaign to get the Federal government to pass the Dyer bill.

Ultimately anti-lynching legislation was not passed by Congress. Yet the activism and agitation around lynching and the campaign to pass the Dyer bill helped to put a needed spotlight on the practice. Women activists succeeded in reducing actual instances of lynching.

I’ve been thinking about what actual justice might look like for Trayvon Martin through an abolitionist and transformative lens. A number of people have been focused on the same question. I’ve decided to archive some of those interventions below:

Justice for Trayvon… but how? Low End Theory

Prison for George Zimmerman is Not Justice for Trayvon Martin By Paul Blasenheim

Remember: a criminal conviction is not justice November 30 Blog

Restorative Justice for Trayvon Martin by Mikhail Lyubansky

Restorative Justice for Trayvon Martin by Jiva Shanti Manske

Trayvon Martin and Black People For the Carceral State by Prison Culture

Trayvon Martin and Prison Abolition by Chanel (Crunk Feminist Collective)

The Zimmerman Trial Through An Abolitionist Lens by Victoria C

We’re NOT All Trayvon Martin by Victoria Law

What Does #Justice4Trayvon Look Like? by Mychal Denzel Smith

What Would Real Justice For Trayvon Martin Look Like? by Kay Whitlock

Why America Needs Another Kind of Justice? by Phillipe Copeland

From The Root

Rita Dove, former poet laureate of the United States, penned a poem inspired by George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of unarmed African-American teen Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon, Redux

It is difficult/ to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there./ Hear me out / for I too am concerned / and every man/ who wants to die at peace in his bed/besides.

William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower”

Move along, you don’t belong here.
This is what you’re thinking. Thinking
drives you nuts these days, all that
talk about rights and law abidance when
you can’t even walk your own neighborhood
in peace and quiet, get your black ass gone.
You’re thinking again. Then what?
Matlock’s on TV and here you are,
vigilant, weary, exposed to the elements
on a wet winter’s evening in Florida
when all’s not right but no one sees it.
Where are they – the law, the enforcers
blind as a bunch of lazy bats can be,
holsters dangling from coat hooks above their desks
as they jaw the news between donuts?

Hey! It tastes good, shoving your voice
down a throat thinking only of sweetness.
Go on, choke on that. Did you say something?
Are you thinking again? Stop! – and
get your ass gone, your blackness,
that casual little red riding hood
I’m just on my way home attitude
as if this street was his to walk on.
Do you do hear me talking to you? Boy.
How dare he smile, jiggling his goodies
in that tiny shiny bag, his black paw crinkling it,
how dare he tinkle their laughter at you.

Here’s a fine basket of riddles:
If a mouth shoots off and no one’s around
to hear it, who can say which came first –
push or shove, bang or whimper?
Which is news fit to write home about?

© 2013 by Rita Dove

I don’t feel vindicated in my belief that George Zimmerman would be found “not guilty” for the killing of Trayvon Martin. For me, the U.S. criminal legal system has always been illegitimate. I consistently write on this blog that we cannot expect a fundamentally corrupt & unjust system to deliver any “justice” at all. This still holds.

I am concerned at the conflation of the “law” and “justice.” The two are not the same. That confusion has led some people to be angry when pundits suggest that the verdict reached by jurors in the Zimmerman trial was correct. I myself had tweeted last week that there was no way he’d be convicted of second degree murder based on the evidence presented at trial. I added that I didn’t think manslaughter was in the cards either. With Trayvon dead, the state’s burden to prove the case “beyond a reasonable doubt” seemed to me insurmountable both for reasons of law and for reasons of racism. By continuing to focus on the law, we will get drawn into an endless debate about procedure and lose sight of the need to uproot oppression and to seek actual justice. I’ll return to this idea in the coming days.

Today, above all, I am thinking of a mother, father, and brother who have lost their beloved son & best friend. I am thinking of the unfairness of demanding that they remain stoic, steadfast, pious, and exceedingly generous throughout this ordeal. I am thinking of the ways that black people are made to endure our suffering and pain on mute. I am wondering about where the “justice” is in this policing of black emotion and affect. The truth is that the dominant culture does not bestow its empathy on even ‘respectable’ black grief. ‘Angry’ black people are actively condemned but stoic and reasonable ones are lauded in passing & then quickly returned to invisibility.

Even before the verdict was delivered, Florida law enforcement released a PSA warning people to keep calm no matter the outcome of the Zimmerman Trial. Black people do not need to be told to be non-violent; the police should be admonished instead. Given the inordinate fire power that the police have at their disposal, I found their warning odd. After all, it’s mostly a suicide mission for marginalized people to violently confront state power. And most black people didn’t think that Zimmerman would be convicted anyway. An uprising was never in the cards.

The police weren’t the only ones preparing for black people to “riot.” Some purported black ‘leaders’ and others warned us to be ‘peaceful’ and to ‘respect the verdict’ of an illegitimate court. Here’s Russell Simmons tweeting something to this effect after the verdict was read: “I know many people are very upset about the verdict, but we must remain peaceful. No matter what, remain peaceful.” Most of these proclamations were issued from the comfort of their condos in gated communities. Their class privilege provides a buffer from the day-to-day stalking and targeting experienced by poor and working class black people. They proudly take up valuable space in the public square to act as middle people between the powerful and the marginalized.

To add insult to injury, many people came out of the woodwork to assert that black people are not sufficiently outraged about intra-racial violence. The contention is that since black people [obviously, according to them] don’t value black life then we deserve to be murdered by vigilantes at will. Yet as @JJ_bola wrote on Twitter: “No one EVER justifies the killing of a white person by saying white people kill each other too. EVER.” He’s right of course and that’s the tragic irony of white supremacy: it kills you while blaming you for your own death.

I’d like to end this post by reclaiming ‘ordinariness’ for black children. When our children are gunned down in cold blood, I want it to be enough that they were simply ordinary as opposed to ‘innocent.’ In the U.S., Black people will never be considered “innocent” and frankly it’s a label that we shouldn’t want to claim for ourselves. None of us is ‘innocent;’ most of us are just ordinary and flawed people. That should be enough to have the right to live.

Trayvon Martin was an ‘ordinary’ young black man. He was valuable in his ordinariness and I loved him for it. Rest in power, Trayvon, rest in power.

I open this with a salutation to all those of like-mind, who in solidarity stand as one. My name is Carlos M. Argueta. I come to you from San Quentin´s Death Row. Here in the Adjustment Center (A/C)[1], like other S.H.U. units, we have endured mental as well as physical torture and injustice by the administration and correctional officers for decades. However, the time has come to respond to this injustice and remain silent no longer.

Never again will we be quiet about the discrimination, the inhumane treatment and torturous practices that take place behind these walls. The misuse and abuse of authority by Prison Officials and Correctional Officers can no longer continue to be kept quiet. The injustice being done here needs to be exposed, with the hope that it may be brought to an end.

Maybe then we can be treated with the dignity and self-respect that is entitled to all human beings. For though we are Death Row prisoners who have already lost our physical freedom, we have not ceased to be human and still have the same rights as everyone else: Human Rights and Civil Rights. When we were sentenced to death, we weren’t sentenced to be mistreated, humiliated, discriminated against, psychologically tortured and kept in solitary dungeons until the day of our executions. Never once did the judge say that was to be part of our sentence.

This is why now is the time for us to make our voices heard. To shed light on the injustice that continues to take place here. The time has come to seek to be treated fairly, with human dignity and have our human rights recognized.

For here in the infamous San Quentin State Prison resides a population of prisoners that have been shunned by the state, allowing prison officials to get away with too many rule violations for far too long. That group of prisoners resides in the Adjustment Center. A prison within a prison and a solitary confinement torture unit used to seclude prisoners from the rest of the prison population. It´s a `punishment unit` otherwise known as a S.H.U.[2] for those who have committed an alleged infraction of the rules. Some are immediately placed in the A/C without any due process afforded or write-up. It is supposed to be only for a set amount of time; after that rule infraction is adjudicated. Once that set amount of time expires they are supposed to be released back to general population. Yet, some are held here without any further rule violations or without ever having had one to begin with. It is supposed to be a unit of “Temporary Punishment” of sorts for rule violators. However, it has only been a unit of torture, sensory deprivation and mental abuse. It is where no prisoner wants to go.

Unfortunately for death row prisoners, there´s no choice but to start serving our death sentence here in this unit upon our arrival from county jail. It is home to 102 prisoners and over 90% of us are death row inmates. Many of us have not left this unit since our arrival at San Quentin, never being given the opportunity to program as moderate inmates, which can be considered a custom afforded to all prisoners when sentenced to state prison. We are held here indefinitely since our arrival, with most of us never having violated a single rule. We have been subjected to a different form of treatment and in truth, we are being punished without merit. We have been housed here in this unit under the false pretense that we are being monitored before we can be given a regular program. The reality though is we have been treated to a harsh and psychologically torturous environment. One where throughout the day and late at night, you can hear the screams of those who have been driven over the edge and into mental illness by the circumstances they are forced to live in. We have been subjected to a different set of rules called `I.P. No. 608`[3]. This is a set of rules that mirrors the CDCR Title 15 Rules book[4] (that governs all CDCR inmates) but gives more authority to death row prison officials and administration to do as they please with us and to violate our rights under the cover of “The Law”, to discriminate against us and hold us here in the A/C –Solitary Confinement indefinitely. This concerns a set of certain prisoners for whom they seem to hold disdain and dislike. As that set of prisoners is only a small fraction of the condemned, they have been able to get away with this for decades.

However, the issues mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg for the problems here on Death Row go far beyond this. To cover them all, we need more time, space and patience from you. We want to disclose it all so you can understand why we also choose to peacefully protest this injustice being done. Why we, too, will be joining the national hunger strike, pitching our own demands for change. The change needed here and everywhere else where there is the continued abuse of authority and solitary confinement torture units. That all needs to come to an end for the greater good of humanity.

In solidarity,

 

Carlos

I am working on a talk that I will present in a couple of weeks. In preparation, I have been re-reading a lot of black feminist writers and practitioners. I stumbled upon an essay by Margaret Wright that I first read when I was in college. I searched for a copy online but couldn’t find one so I’ve decided to reproduce the essay here [as printed]. In light of all of the talk lately about women needing to “Lean In” and what not, this essay still appears to be relevant in a number of ways.

What parts of the piece do you think still resonate today? Which parts feel dated or off-base?

Margaret Wright, a community activist in the early 1970s and a member of Women Against Repression, a black women’s liberation group, wrote this piece in 1970. She was a married mother of four at the time.

by Favianna Rodriguez

Black women have been doubly oppressed. On the job, we’re low women on the totem pole. White women have their problems. They’re interviewed for secretarial instead of the executive thing. But we’re interviewed for mopping floors and stuff like that. Sometimes we have to take what’s left over in Miss Ann’s refrigerator. This is all exploitation. And when we get home from work, the old man is wondering why his greens aren’t cooked on time.

We’re also exploited in the Movement. We run errands, lick stamps, mail letters and do the door-to-door. But when it comes to the speaker’s platform, it’s all men up there blowing their souls, you dig?

Some white man wrote this book about the black matriarchy, saying that black women ran the community. Which is bull. We don’t run no community. We went out and worked because they wouldn’t give our men jobs. This is where some of us are different from the white women’s liberation movement. We don’t think work liberates you. We’ve been doing it so damned long.

The black man used to admire the black women for all they’d endured to keep the race going. Now the black man is saying he wants a family structure like the white man’s. He’s got to be head of the family and women have to be submissive and all that nonsense. Hell, the white woman is already oppressed in that setup.

Black man have been brainwashed into believing they’ve been emasculated. I tell them they’re nuts. They’ve never been emasculated. Emasculated men don’t revolt. And if they were so emasculated, these blondes wouldn’t be running after them. Black women aren’t oppressing them. We’re helping them get their liberation. It’s the white man who’s oppressing, not us. All we ever did was scrub floors so they could get their little selves together!

It used to be that only older women felt like this. But now the younger sisters, and the ones in college, are beginning to feel the same way. They see a brother walking around campus with a blonde on his arm just after he left the BSU blowing black is beautiful. So it tees them off. Also, black women feel they have to move to the front now, because they’re doing our men in. Whenever effective male leaders come up, they either get their brains blown out, or they’re thrown in jail.

In black women’s liberation we don’t want to be equal with men, just like in black liberation we’re not fighting to be equal with the white man. We’re fighting for the right to be different and not be punished for it. Equal means sameness. I don’t want to be equal with the white community because I don’t think it’s very groovy. And why do I want to be equal with something that ain’t groovy?

Men are chauvinistic. I don’t want to be chauvinistic. Some women run over people in the business world, doing the same thing as men. I don’t want to compete on no damned exploitative level. I don’t want to exploit nobody. I don’t want to be on no firing line, killing people. I want the right to be black and me.

Source: cited in Mary Reinholz, “Storming the All Electric Dollhouse,” West Magazine, Los Angeles Times, June 7, 1970. [also in Black Women in White America: A Documentary History, edited by Gerda Lerner]

As the Zimmerman trial churns, the idea of self-defense figures prominently in the legal proceeding. Did George Zimmerman shoot Trayvon Martin because he was ‘standing his ground’ when attacked by him? Was Trayvon the one who was protecting himself against a strange man following him with a gun?

Last week, Zimmerman’s defense team contended that “Trayvon Martin did, in fact, cause his own death.” In a society where black skin is an inherent marker of suspicion and criminality, Trayvon’s (disposable) body becomes a lethal weapon. This gives anyone a license to kill him. His dangerous ‘weaponized’ black skin means that he can only be an aggressor and never a victim.

As something less than human, Trayvon is disembodied and therefore has no ‘self’ to defend. Aware of this, prosecutors have resorted to painting a portrait of a young man who didn’t try to fight back against being stalked by a stranger. This ‘turn-the-other cheek’ Trayvon Martin is as unrealistic to me as the defense’s version of a menacing Ninja criminalblackman. Despite history’s precedent, I sure as heck hope that Trayvon believed that he had a ‘self’ worth defending and that he did indeed fight back.

Over the past few months, I’ve referenced several incidents (such as lynchings and other forms of violence against black people) documented by Rev. Elijah Clarence Branch in his book titled “Judge Lynch’s Court in America (1913?).” Citing a Houston Chronicle article published on February 12, 1913, Rev. Branch shares a woman named Mary Wilson’s misfortune:

“San Antonio, Texas, February 12 – A charge of murder has been preferred against Mary Wilson, a Negro woman, arrested in connection with the killing of Olaf Olson, a trooper of Fort Sam Houston, last Monday.

“According to Sheriff Tobin the woman signed a written confession and a copy of this has been presented to the grand jury. She waived preliminary examination before Justice Campbell and was bound over without bail.

“The woman stated that the soldier was at her house Sunday night and threatened her. When she started to go to a friend’s home, she said, he followed her and caught hold of her. Believing he intended to do her bodily injury, she says, she drew a revolver and shot him.”

Rev. Branch offered his thoughts about this incident:

“A white man was killed and a Negro woman arrested. What was it? It was only a case of social equality. What right did he have in her room? The white people are burning Negro men about white women, unidentified. Why not let the Negro women protect themselves? Do any honest set of men regardless of color say he had any right in this woman’s room? The white people will harp on the separation of the races until a white man is killed about a Negro woman. She had a legal right to protect herself and home.

I’ve written before about how women of color are often precluded from invoking self-defense. Mary Wilson’s story is unfortunately all too common. She was criminalized for protecting herself and so are countless people of color still today.

This history impacts how black people consider the concept of self-defense. Over the weekend, I read an excellent essay by Vargas & James (2012) recommended to me by Dr. Christina Sharpe. The authors make the provocative point that black people have an ambivalent relationship to self-defense:

“Blacks do not easily, publicly embrace the concept of self-defense. Perhaps this embrace makes them feel more vulnerable to violence and censorship. Perhaps it challenges the constitution of the all-loving cyborg who demonstrates “superiority” by their capacity to love haters? (p.200).”

It seems important for us, as black people, in this historical moment to publicly re-assert that we have ‘selves’ worth defending; that Trayvon had a self worth defending. I woke up this morning to the news that Yasin Bey (formerly Mos Def) underwent the force-feeding torture to which Guantanamo prisoners are subjected. My first and continuing thought is that he’s the wrong body to undertake this stunt if his goal is to illicit outrage or any emotion really. His black skin is a repellent to empathy. Who will empathize with him as he cries? The logical extension of black people having no ‘selves’ to defend is that we also have little empathy that we can generate in others (even if they look like us). I think that we’ll see this play out in a few days when the verdict in the Martin trial is announced…