The Injustice of Black America

The Injustice of Black America

Since the age of slavery, America has treated blacks as property and used them for free labor. In the summer of 1919, race riots broke out through the southern states by white mobs killing hundreds of blacks and burning down towns calling it the Red Summer because of all the bloodshed that was left in the wake of the riots. Out of all of these race riots throughout the south, the city of Elaine Arkansas was considered the worst of them all. Sharecroppers were being cheated on pay for the work they had done until one black man named Robert Hill formed a union to protect black sharecroppers by paying dues to the union so they could afford lawyers to sue plantation owners for the cotton that was stolen from them. This outraged landowners that blacks had the audacity to challenge them and dared to fight back. So, one night the blacks gathered at a church to talk about their agendas for the union. In fear that something would happen, they put guards outside the church with shotguns. Two white men were riding by and saw the guards and yelled out to them to get away from the church. In that moment shots rang out and one of the white men almost died instantly. Within hours the paper printed a story saying that vicious blacks were planning an uprising. Two years later another mass killing of blacks occurred in Tulsa Oklahoma, in which it was called Black Wall Street. This massacre took place because they claimed a young black man assaulted a young white girl on an elevator. The young man was arrested the next day and the young girl refused to press charges on the young black male. A large mob of whites gathered in front of the courthouse with guns and a group of blacks also marched down to the courthouse to protect the young man. Things got heated between the two groups and from there things went south. Hundreds of blacks were killed and over half of their city was burned to the ground and no was charged for this crime. In 1967 there was a case were two officers violated the civil rights of 15 priest saying they were guilty for breach of peace. A judge sentenced the priest to 4 months in jail and a $200 dollar fine, they raised money for bail and appealed the case where the judge dropped the charges. After that they sought out charges alleging the police and the local judge had violated Title 42, Section 1983 of the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by false arrest and imprisonment for exercising their civil rights. However, the jury found in favor of the police who said they were trying to prevent imminent violence from a gathered crowd, contradicting the evidence of the priests. So, they used the qualified immunity law to protect the judge and the officers from being charged with violating the rights of the priest.