Page 87 - 1619 Project Curriculum

The 1619 Project

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Several years ago, my law offi ce was Maryland decreed that all Negroes and brutal treatment . so poor and Codes: driving while black, sleeping

fighting for the release of a black within the province ‘‘shall serve emaciated that their bones almost while black, sitting in a coff ee shop

man who had been condemned, durante vita,’’ hard labor for life. This come through the skin.’’ while black. All reflect incidents

at the age of 16, to die in prison. enslavement would be sustained by Anything that challenged the in which African-Americans were

Matthew was one of 62 Louisiana the threat of brutal punishment. By racial hierarchy could be seen as a mistreated, assaulted or arrested for

children sentenced to life imprison- 1729, Maryland law authorized pun- crime, punished either by the law or conduct that would be ignored if they

ment without parole for nonhomi- ishments of enslaved people includ- by the lynchings that stretched from were white. In schools, black kids

enses. But a case I’d argued

cide off ing ‘‘to have the right hand cut off Mississippi to Minnesota. In 1916, are suspended and expelled at rates

at the Supreme Court was part of a ... the head severed from the body, Anthony Crawford was lynched in that vastly exceed the punishment of

2010 ruling that banned such sen- the body divided into four quarters, South Carolina for being successful white children for the same behavior.

tences for juveniles, making our and head and quarters set up in the enough to refuse a low price for his Inside courtrooms, the problem

clients eligible for release. most public places of the county.’’ cotton. In 1933, Elizabeth Lawrence gets worse. Racial disparities in sen-

Some had been in prison for near- Soon American slavery matured was lynched near Birmingham for tencing are found in almost every

ly 50 years. Almost all had been sent into a perverse regime that denied daring to chastise white children crime category. Children as young

to Angola, a penitentiary considered the humanity of black people while who were throwing rocks at her. as 13, almost all black, are sentenced

one of still criminalizing their actions. As It’s not just that this history fos- to life imprisonment for nonhomi-

America’s most violent and

abusive. Angola is immense, larger the Supreme Court of Alabama tered a view of black people as cide off enses. Black defendants are

than Manhattan, covering land once explained in 1861, enslaved black presumptively criminal. It also cul- 22 times more likely to receive the

occupied by slave plantations. Our people were ‘‘capable of committing tivated a tolerance for employing death penalty for crimes whose vic-

clients there worked in fields under crimes,’’ and in that capacity were any level of brutality in response. tims are white, rather than black — a

the supervision of horse-riding, ‘‘regarded as persons’’ — but in most In 1904, in Mississippi, a black man type of bias the Supreme Court has

shotgun-toting guards who forced every other sense they were ‘‘inca- was accused of shooting a declared ‘‘inevitable.’’

white

them to pick crops, including cotton. pable of performing civil acts’’ and landowner who had attacked him. The smog created by our history

Their disciplinary records show that considered ‘‘things, not persons.’’ A white mob captured him and the of racial injustice is suffocating

if they refused to pick cotton — or The 13th Amendment is credited woman with him, cut off their ears and toxic. We are too practiced in

failed to pick it fast enough — they with ending slavery, but it stopped and fingers, drilled corkscrews into ignoring the victimization of any

could be punished with time in ‘‘the short of that: It made an exception their flesh and then burned them black people tagged as criminal;

hole,’’ where food was restricted and for those convicted of crimes. After alive — while hundreds of white like Woods Eastland’s crowd, too

inmates were sometimes tear-gassed. emancipation, black people, once spectators enjoyed deviled eggs and many Americans are willing spec-

Still, some black prisoners, including seen as less than fully human ‘‘slaves,’’ lemonade. The landowner’s brother, tators to horrifying acts, as long as
Matthew, considered the despair of were seen as less than fully human Woods Eastland, presided over the we’re assured they’re in the interest

the hole preferable to the unbearable ‘‘criminals.’’ The provisional gover- violence; he was later elected district of maintaining order.
degradation of being forced to pick nor of South Carolina declared in attorney of Scott County, Miss., a This cannot be the end of the

cotton on a plantation at the end of 1865 that they had to be ‘‘restrained position that allowed his son James story. In 2018, the Equal Justice Ini-

the 20th century. I was fearful that from theft, idleness, vagrancy and Eastland, an avowed white suprem- tiative, a nonprofit I direct, opened
such clients would be denied parole crime.’’ Laws governing slavery were acist, to serve six terms as a United a museum in Montgomery, Ala.,

based on their disciplinary records. replaced with Black Codes govern- States senator, becoming president dedicated to the legacy of slavery

Some were. ing free black people — making the pro tempore from 1972 to 1978. and a memorial honoring thousands

The United States has the highest criminal-justice system central to This appetite for harsh pun- of black lynching victims. We must

rate of incarceration of any nation on new strategies of racial control. ishment has echoed across the acknowledge the 400 years of injus-

Earth: We represent 4 percent of the These strategies intensified when- decades. Late in the 20th century, tice that haunt us. I’m encouraged:

planet’s population but 22 percent ever black people asserted their inde- amid protests over civil rights and Half a million people have visited.

of its imprisoned. In the early 1970s, pendence or achieved any measure inequality, a new politics of fear and But I’m also worried, because we

our prisons held fewer than 300,000 of success. During Reconstruction, anger would emerge. Nixon’s war are at one of those critical moments

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people; since then, that number has the emergence of black elected offi on drugs, mandatory minimum sen- in American history when we will

grown to more than 2.2 million, cials and entrepreneurs was coun- tences, three-strikes laws, children either double down on romanticiz-

with 4.5 million more on probation tered b tried as adults, ‘‘broken windows’’ ing our past or accept that there is
y convict leasing, a scheme in

or parole. Because of mandatory which white policymakers invented policing — these policies were not something better waiting for us.

sentencing and ‘‘three strikes’’ laws, off enses used to target black people: as expressly racialized as the Black I recently went to New Orleans
I've found myself representing cli- vagrancy, loitering, being a group of Codes, but their implementation to celebrate the release of several of

ents sentenced to life without parole black people out after dark, seeking has been essentially the same. It is our Angola clients, including Mat-

for stealing a bicycle or for simple employment without a note from black and brown people who are dis- thew — men who survived the fields

possession marijuana. And cen- a former enslaver. The imprisoned proportionately targeted, stopped, and the hole. I realized how import-
of

tral to understanding this practice were then ‘‘leased’’ to businesses suspected, incarcerated and shot by ant it is to stay hopeful: Hopeless-

of mass incarceration and excessive and farms, where they labored under the police. ness is the enemy of justice. There

punishment is the legacy of slavery. brutal conditions. An 1887 report in were moments of joy that night.

Mississippi found that six months Hundreds of years after the arrival But there was also heaviness; we all

It took only a few decades after the after 204 prisoners were leased to a of enslaved Africans, a presumption seemed keenly aware that we were

arrival enslaved Africans in Vir- white man named McDonald, doz- of danger and criminality still fol- not truly free from the burden of
of

ginia before white settlers demand- ens were dead or dying, the prison lows black people everywhere. New living in a nation that continues to

ed a new world defined by racial hospital filled with men whose bod- language has emerged for the non- deny and doubt this legacy, and how

caste. The 1664 General Assembly of ies bore ‘ ‘marks of the most inhuman crimes that have replaced the Black much work remains to be done.•

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Photograph by Spencer Lowell