Collection
Lynchings, Race Riots, and Police Brutality
Examining the role of law enforcement in respect to racial violence through historical events and examining trends of corruption and conformity.
In the headquartered city of the KKK, a protest for desegregation efforts ended in a race riot after confrontation with whites as Klansmen beat black protestors, with no productive intervention from police. Rather, police joined in the violence against protestors, ultimately silencing the testimony of victims and failing to hold white participants, especially white officers, accountable years later. How does this failure of the justice system continue today for African Americans?
In New York City (1920s), police corruption was especially prevalent, prioritizing and protecting the needs of incoming European immigrants. Decentralized policing allowed cops to have autonomous discretion on the streets, often facilitating crime and acting on bias without recourse. Is law enforcement corruption inevitable? How have the power dynamics between politics and law enforcement changed? Does it seem black efforts to combat this have been successful?
In response to violation of codified segregation, police alongside angry rioters began to drag and beat the mixed-race audience of a Paul Robeson concert out of their cars and quickly turned into a race riot which injured 150. Robeson was known to advocate in support of Civil Rights, but his anti-war sentiment made him a diplomatic target, stating blacks shouldn’t defend a country that oppresses them. In what ways did the public shift opinion on African Americans in regard to military service?
Law enforcement is the center of the government’s tense relationship to white supremacy groups. Thier complicity in racial attacks has perpetuated their growth and power and shifted groups’ ideologies to neo-Nazism. In contrast, how have Civil Rights groups gained power? After the Civil Rights Act, how might their ideologies shift?
Police body cams/cell phones have come to capture modern “lynchings,” this time, used as evidence to hold offenders accountable, despite claims that acts are just. This captured evidence displayed through media gives power to turn its prospective viewers into spectators. Is there a difference between how “spectacle” lynchings were motivated back then versus today? Why/why not?