Here we go again. Another city. Milwaukee this time. Another police shooting of a black man—coming after a long history of black people being killed by police.
Another riot. And the same self-righteous condemnation of the rioters, as the mayor pleads for calm, the governor declares a state of emergency, and mobilizes the National Guard. And the newer twist: blaming Black Lives Matter for everything―from cop killings to ignoring black on black crime.
It’s high time for those of us who like to think of the United States as the land of freedom and equal rights to stop―and pay close attention to what police forces are doing to populations of color throughout this country. Without Black Lives Matter, most of us white people would be looking away from the painful videos, or casually denying the painful reality of everyday discrimination and brutality.
And no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, we’d better start recognizing that without rebellions, our media and our politicians just don’t pay attention.
If black Ferguson residents hadn’t marched and demonstrated and stopped traffic and business as usual and eventually rioted in a town most of us had never heard of, do you think we would have had a Department of Justice report on Ferguson’s finest that includes this gem? “We discovered emails circulated by police supervisors and court staff that stereotype racial minorities as criminals, including one email that joked about an abortion by an African-American woman being a means of crime control.”
When Governor Jay Nixon mobilized the National Guard, saying, “This community deserves to have peace,” whose peace was he defending? That of Ferguson’s black residents, or that of the police who issued 90,000 citations between 2010 and 2014—mostly and disproportionately to people of color—in a town of 21,000?
When it was Baltimore, President Obama himself called black rioters “criminals.” But how much attention were the White House and the rest of the political establishment paying to “rough rides” in Baltimore before Freddy Gray’s neighbors took to the streets? Now we’ve got a Department of Justice report describing (in great detail) actions you would have expected from a 19 century colonial police force in Africa, Asia, or India (notice anything about the natives’ skin colors?): public, invasive strip searches of men and women; “unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests;” “overly aggressive tactics [that] unnecessarily escalate encounters and result in excessive force;” and “unreasonable force against individuals with a mental disability.”
A DOJ report on the Milwaukee police is already underway, requested by the current chief after one of his white officers killed an unarmed mentally ill black man who had been sleeping in a park. But would we have had this New York Times article without the eruption of the past few days—which highlights the real “state of emergency” under which the city’s black residents are living every single day: poverty, unemployment, poor housing, and lousy schools.
Most white folks like to think we got rid of systemic racial discrimination way back in the 1960s, as we followed the heroic and nonviolent lead of the civil rights movement headed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and the key assistance of President Lyndon Johnson.)
But look more carefully at Birmingham AL in 1963, the place most of us know as the site of Chief Bull Connor’s thuggish overreach as he set fire hoses and police dogs on the Children’s Crusade, for King’s matchless Letter from Birmingham City Jail, and for the movement’s greatest nonviolent success prior to the great March on Washington in August.
Less well known are the Birmingham riots of 1963. When cops and firemen attacked marching children on May 3, many onlookers responded by throwing brickbats. A similar scene took place the next day. And finally, overnight on May 11-12, after city officials and civil rights activists had announced the Birmingham Truce Agreement, Klan members, probably including police, bombed King’s recently vacated room at the Gaston Motel, as well as his brother A.D.’s home. (They all escaped unharmed.)
Some Birmingham black people began to sing “We Shall Overcome,” but many more threw rocks. They set fires and stopped police cars and fire trucks. Three black men stabbed a white police officer. Joined by state troopers with submachine guns, the police fought back—with teargas and clubs, and by using guns to herd protesters into buildings, including the just bombed Gaston Motel.
Watching TV a world away President John F. Kennedy concluded he could send soldiers to Birmingham without any white backlash because he would be putting down the black riot rather than racist white cops. “First we have to have law and order, so the Negro’s not running all over the city,” tapes recorded him saying to Bobby.
As Malcolm X observed, Kennedy didn’t send troops when dogs were biting black children; he only did so when Birmingham’s Negroes showed “that they were just as capable of defending themselves in Birmingham as they have been capable in the past of defending America on the battlefields of Korea and Germany.”
In that same conversation, Kennedy finally acknowledged, “As a means of providing relief we have to have legislation.” The irony is painful: King and his movement were at their creative, nonviolent best in Birmingham, but it took a black riot to get JFK to introduce what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
For good or ill, violence or the threat of violence often accompanies protest movements—just as it lies behind every cop’s order. It may be self-defeating and destructive. But King himself called riots “the language of the unheard.” Unlike letter-writing campaigns, nonviolent marches, or sit-ins, they always get the attention of the powerful.