Contextualising Outcomes for Black Children
The Importance of History
This project is dedicated to every life harmed by and lost to white supremacy. We recognize that this timeline is in no way comprehensive and cannot portray the full impact of white supremacy on the lives of Black children. We are actively working to find justice for all individuals and communities impacted through our research and our work.
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1619
A ship carrying 20 to 30 enslaved Africans, arrives at Point Comfort in Virginia, then still a British Colony. Black children are barred from learning to read and write, and their parents had no claim over them. Black children could be sold and separated from their parents.
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1667
The first Slave Codes are passed in Virginia. They are a separate set of laws for all Black people, whether they were free or not. Their creation sends a message that all African Americans are property and not worth being included in the colonial judicial system. Also, slave masters are often given the jurisdiction and the power to carry out punishment under the slave codes.
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1676
Nathaniel Bacon freed Black servants and worked with Native Americans in order to fight against class injustice within the colony. Governor William Berkely understood that if there was unity among these three groups on the grounds of class he would never truly be able to regain control and so he created racial divisions by introducing white privilege. He only pardoned white rebels and gave white people the authority to abuse any Black person.
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1704
Slave patrols are established in the Carolina colonies in order to return runaway slaves and deter Black people from participating in slave revolutions. Post Civil War, these slave patrols became modern day police forces.
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1774
One of the main economic reasons that the colonists seek independence is because England begins to discuss the morality of slavery. The growing abolition movement is a threat to the American institution of slavery. Since slavery has become the basis for America's agricultural economy, the colonialists want to protect this lucrative system and their own economic self interest.
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1790
The first prison is built in Philadelphia. The prison is 100% white but that is only because Black people, even those who are free, are bound to a separate system, wherein slave owners determine and administer punishment. This establishes a societal attitude that only white people were worthy of due process while Black people, no matter their status, are property.
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1830
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 expels a number of Native American nations from their land and forces them to relocate to Indian Territory via the Trail of Tears. White, slave-owning settlers move onto Native land, thus spreading slavery West and expanding the slave trade between various territories.
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1847
The 1847 Virginia Criminal Code dictates that if any white person tries to teach Black people to read, and to write will be imprisoned and fined.
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1850
Roberts v. City of Boston: Sarah C. Roberts, a five-year-old Black child is forced to go to an all-Black school far away from her home as she was denied entry to the white schools near her home. Her father contested this issue but the judge rules in favor of the city of Boston and established that there is “no constitutional impediment to segregated schools.” This ruling sets the precedent for Plessy V. Ferguson and larger Jim Crow segregation.
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1857
Dred Scott v. Sanford states that “Blacks—slaves as well as free—were not and could never become citizens of the United States.” This case labels Black people as property, allowing for further denial of basic human rights.
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1865
The Reconstruction Era begins with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude except for its use as criminal punishment. This was a period where the United States grappled with the reintegration of the seceded states and the integration of freed Black people into society. Former Confederate states resisted reconstruction with laws and statutes (see: 1868) that would emulate slavery for freed, nonincarcerated Black people in the south.
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1866
The Vagrancy Act of 1866 determined the lack of employment or lack of proof of employment is a felony. This forces Black people into sharecropping- a system where white landowners would “rent” out plots of land in exchange for a share of the crops produced every year- often because these are the only jobs offered to them. This system functioned as a way white owners could still profit off of Black labor while keeping Black people in cycles of debt and servitude. This law worked to ensure Black people would either be incarcerated or participate in this continuation of slavery. This act, among others, is responsible for increases in disproportionate incarceration.
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1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, and provided “equal rights under law” for all Black people. It declares Black people citizens. In addition, the Act makes it a misdemeanor punishable by prison or a fine to deny Black people their individual right. Although this act is meant to protect Black people, its efforts were often undermined by the Black Codes that were passed in Southern States the same year (see: 1866 The Vagrancy Act). Another example is provision passed in South Carolina that mandated Black people to work as farmers or servants. If they wished to hold any other occupation they had to pay a tax anywhere from ten to a hundred dollars.
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1868
The 14th Amendment is passed in 1868, guaranteeing citizenship and "equal protection" to Black people, including former slaves. The 14th Amendment goes on to form the basis of the Brown v. Board decision.
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1868
The state of Georgia is the first state in the South to begin the practice of “convict leasing” out inmates to major corporations in order to create revenues. Because of increased incarceration of freed Black people, convict leasing was yet another way to profit off of coerced Black labor. This practice has been called neoslavery. From the time Georgia began convict leasing to the time this practice ended, prison populations increased 10 times. This practice officially ended in 1928 when Alabama, the last southern state to do so, stopped leasing their convicts. However there is an ongoing debate surrounding the privatization of prisons and production via prison labor as the continuation of slavery.
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1870
The 15th Amendment is passed, granting voting rights to former slaves and all other African Americans. The passage of this amendment leads to widespread suppression of Black votes in the form of literacy laws, land owning laws, and the Black Codes (see: 1866).
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1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 originally includes a guarantee of public schools to all, regardless of race, but this provision is dropped from the bill before passage. This act protects Black people from discrimination in spaces open to the public, including private businesses like movie theaters and restaurants.
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1877
Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidential election when he gained the support of the electoral college by promising the withdrawal of troops from southern states, effectively ending the Reconstruction Era and beginning the Jim Crow Era.
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1879
The Exodus of 1879: after the end of Reconstruction, Black people attempted to escape Jim Crow era violence by moving west to states such as Kansas and Oklahoma where they could take advantage of the land offerings of the Homestead Act. There was a massive push to Kansas for its history and involvement in emancipation. However, migration left many Black people without resources or shelter. This movement was vehemently opposed by politicians and white people who wanted to use Black people for cheap labor.
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1882 - 1968
There were a total of 3,446 documented cases of Black lynchings in the United States during this time.
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1883
The Civil Rights Cases challenged the constitutionality of many parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as a way to continue legal discrimination. For example, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed discrimination in private businesses that served a public purpose (i.e., movie theaters, restaurants, etc.) and was declared unconstitutional in 1883 on the grounds that the government could not interfere with private business according to the 14th amendment.
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1896
Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of “separate but equal” facilities. Educational segregation and Roberts V. City of Boston (1850) are used as the precedent to uphold the constitutionality of segregation.
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1913
Woodrow Willson supervises the mass resegregation of federal government agencies. Agencies that were integrated due to the reconstruction era, are segregated once again. Cages were ordered to be built around Black faculty that cannot be removed from their area because of logistics (such as secretaries and clerks) in order to seperate them from the rest of the white employees in that office space. Willson personally dismissed 15 out of 17 Black employees and replaced them with white people. The Wilson administration further increased segregation in 1914 when the federal government began requiring a photograph of the applicant to be attached to job applications.
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1915
The Birth of a Nation, a movie adapted from the screenplay titled The Clansman that romanticizes the Confederate South, premiers. It is sympathetic to the anti-Black, pro confederate group the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and many believe it contributed to its resurgence. Woodrow Willson supported this movie and quotes from his book A History of the American People were included in the movie. These quotes glorify the KKK and brands them as a “veritable empire of the South” that wants to preserve the South.
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1917
Buchanan v. Warley rules that zone ordinances prohibiting Black people from moving onto majority-white blocks are unconstitutional due to property ownership rights. This leads to deliberate zoning based on economic restrictions that mask racial segregation.
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1917
Anti-black racism in East St. Louis intensifies when 470 Black people are hired to replace white workers who had gone on strike at the Aluminum Ore Co. A riot breaks out in May after a City Council meeting where white citizens complain about the mass migration of Black people to St. Louis. White people form mobs and march downtown, beating Black citizens. In July, news breaks of a white police officer being shot by a Black man after being mistaken for a car of white “joyriders” (drive-by shooters) that had previously attacked the neighborhood on multiple occasions. Once again a mob forms. White residents begin burning down the homes of Black people and shooting people as they flee. In other parts of the city white mobs lynch Black people as their homes burn. This became known as the Massacre of East St. Louis.
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1919
The summer of 1919 is known as the Red Summer because of the outbreak of anti-black riots all around the country. White veterans and community members began attacking and killing Black residents in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. Mainly, white residents are angered by the increased populations of Black residents caused by the Great Migration. Additionally, returning Black veterans are seen as a threat to Jim Crow because they began to speak out against segregation upon their return to the United States. Black veterans attempt to patrol and protect their communities, but nonetheless, all over the country, thousands of Black Americans are left dead, homeless, and injured
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1921
A wealthy, Black neighborhood in Tulsa, OK known as Black Wall Street- because it was home to many prosperous Black owned businesses that would allow for generational wealth-is destroyed by mobs of white residents. As many as 300 Black residents are murdered and 10,000 made homeless. This is one of the most barbaric racial massacres in US history, yet no perpetrators are convicted or held responsible for this devastating act of white violence.
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1926
The dismissal of Corrigan v. Buckley is used to support the judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, contractual agreements between real estate boards, neighborhood associations, and property owners, that block racial minorities from buying, leasing, and occupying certain properties. Afterwards, these covenants become increasingly common. Also at this time, the first dragnet system was established in Los Angeles. It is a coordinated effort by law enforcement to seek out “criminals” that consists of increasing police presence in urban areas mostly populated by Black and Latinx people. This acts as an informal, racist stop and frisk policy where officers would apprehend individuals they deemed “suspicious,” which are often Black and Brown men.
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1933
The National Industrial Recovery Act establishes the Public Works Administration which goes on to build the first civilian public housing projects. These projects are segregated, with few Black-only projects and a focus on middle and low income white families suffering from the Great Depression.
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1934
The National Housing Act protects mortgage lenders from default, subsidizes builders of white-only suburbs, and creates the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The FHA's Underwriting Handbook includes color-coded “residential security maps”, with minority neighborhoods falling into red, "hazardous," zones. This leads to the practice of redlining, the refusal to back mortgages in communities based on racial and ethnic makeup. Redlining reinforces poverty and low property values in Black and Latinx neighborhoods. Because schools are funded by property taxes, this leads to lower funding in majority Black and Latinx schools.
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1937
The Housing Act of 1937 replaces the Public Works Association and Housing Division with a permanent public housing agency called the United States Housing Authority. It makes provisions for federal loans for public housing and gives local authorities the jurisdiction over local public housing projects. Local authorities could determine the location of the projects which eventually drives further segregation.
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1948
Shelley v. Kramer rules that the judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants is unconstitutional but that the covenants themselves are not invalid. This allows private parties to continue to use them on a voluntary basis, perpetuating and further entrenching segregation.
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1949
The Housing Act of 1949 expands the Federal Public Housing program. The act allows for racial discrimination and the segregation of white-only and Black-only housing projects. Due to the creation of subsidized white-only suburbs, “white flight” leads to an increase in vacancies in white-only housing projects. Along with this, there is an increasing number of Black people in need of public housing due to redlining and their explicit exclusion from suburbs. This combination of open housing and increased need leads to the integration of housing projects by housing authorities. The racialized nature of public housing continues to this day, as Black individuals and communities are barred from opportunities to build wealth via home ownership.
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1954
Brown v. Board of Education rules that segregation on the sole basis of race is unconstitutional, as 'separate but equal' education is "inherently unequal." Local and state authorities defy mandated school integration. Brown v. Board of Education II, a second court case decided as an add on to the first Brown v. Board, allows for further evasion of compliance by failing to set a deadline for desegregation
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1955
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old, African American young man is murdered for allegedly grabbing a white woman and flirting with her. The woman’s husband and brother kidnapped Emmett and drove him to Tallahatchie River, tortured and killed him, then tied him to a 40-pound cotton gin fan, and threw his body in the river. His body was so mutilated that he could only be identified with an initial ring he was wearing. His murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury. The white woman confessed in 2017 that she made it up.
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1955
The first School Resource Officer is employed in Flint, Michigan. This is the first introduction of law enforcement into schools, specifically schools that are predominantly Black and Latinx. This eventually leads to what is commonly referred to as the school-to-prison-pipeline, a system wherein Black and Latinx children are funneled out of schools and into the juvenile justice system. The pipeline is maintained through the continual presence of law enforcement in predominantly Black and Latinx schools along with the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline and a lack of access to a quality education for Black and Latinx students.
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1956
The state of Virginia adopts the strategy of Massive Resistance in order to, quite literally, resist federal efforts to desegregate through a series of state specific legislation that preserves educational segregation. The Stanley plan - a package of 13 statues to resist desegregation - is adopted in September of this year. Among other things, the Stanley Plan gives the Governor the power to close schools that begin to integrate. In 1958 the governor closed multiple schools for this reason.
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1964
On February 3, 1964 450,000 Black and Puerto Rican children stay home from school and join demonstrations across NYC against the segregation of NYC public schools in one of the biggest civil rights demonstrations in the country. The students and parents push for NYC to adopt a desegregation busing plan. Despite the size of this event it receives almost no national attention and does not achieve its goal. Months later, as a response, 15,000 white people march against a busing integration plan in New York City. They call themselves NYC Parents and Taxpayers. They receive national attention and are cited all throughout the country in political debates regarding busing and desegregation plans.
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1964
The New York Criminal Code of Conduct is amended to allow for the “temporary questioning of persons in public places; search for weapons.” It is the first official implementation of stop and frisk. This same year, 15-year-old James Powell is shot and killed by Lieutenant Gilligan in front of Powell’s friends. The Lieutenant claims he shot Powell three times in self defense. The murder of James Powell incites what becomes known as the Harlem Riots of 1964. The principal of their school notifies the community and three hundred of Powell’s classmates protest his death.
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1965
Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims a War on Crime and the Law Enforcement Assistance Act is passed, allowing the Attorney General to allocate funding and weapons to local police departments. This causes the militarization of police departments and increased use of force in predominantly Black or Latinx communities.
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1968
The Fair Housing Act makes redlining and racially restrictive covenants illegal. However, discrimination has already been entrenched in every single aspect of the housing market for decades, and this, coupled with the lack of enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, leads to its ineffectiveness. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 continues to further "white flight" reinforced by scandals involving the 235 Program where poor families of color are sold urban, dilapidated houses at prices they cannot afford.
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1971
Nixon declares the War on Drugs and proposes mandatory sentencing for drug possession. The administration identifies marijuana as a schedule I drug - the schedule indicating a high risk of abuse without accepted medical use (at the time the schedules are created). Oxycodone and fentanyl were placed in Schedule II - a category that indicates a high potential for abuse but is less severe than Schedule I, despite the deadly quality of these expensive drugs that are used more frequently in wealthy white communities.
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1973
Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver rules that de jure (officially sanctioned through policy) segregation is unconstitutional because it is explicitly intentional within laws and policies but de facto (existing but not officially santioned) segregation is constitutional because intent cannot be proven. This protects segregation that is not a result of explicit School Board policy, leading to increased levels of school segregation since this case.
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1973
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez rules that because education is not a fundamental right, unequal school funding rooted in redlining does not violate the constitution.
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1973
The Rockefeller Drug Law is passed in NY. It is the first zero tolerance drug policy and mandates a minimum 15 year prison sentence for drug possession over 2 ounces of marijuana, heroine, morphine, and cocaine. This disproportionately affects Black and Latinx communities because of the high volume of law enforcement officials that are already policing in communities of color.
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1974
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act prohibits youth from being detained with adults and asks states to address the over-representation of youth of color in juvenile institutions.
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1974
In Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court rules against a multi-district busing plan for the desegregation of schools because the NAACP could not prove that the segregation of schools was de jure. Because the Supreme Court did not uphold the necessity of busing programs, the General Education Provisions Act is passed, prohibiting federal funds to be used for busing programs, basically making desegregation voluntary for districts.
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1975
The Brown v. Illinois decision holds that evidence is admissible in court if it was found near the time of the initial stop of the suspect. This ruling was used to support the constitutionality of stop and frisk because it allows for officers to find evidence quickly which was one of the main attributes and alleged motivations of stop and frisk
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1976
Ronald Reagan constructs and utilizes the persona of the “Welfare Queen” on the campaign trail. In an anecdote during a speech, he references a woman in Chicago who had been caught defrauding the government through welfare. He never names this woman but instead leaves her as an ambiguous character that is later applied to all Black women on welfare. This propaganda allows for Reagan to spend his presidency reducing and regulating welfare programs. By the end of his second term, over half of Americans believe that welfare rewards laziness and should be restricted. This ideology is later perpetuated by President Clinton, creating a legacy of the demonization of poverty and limiting access to necessary resources to Black families.
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1980
Along with other bills passed in the 80s and 90s, the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act helped solidify the growth of a secondary mortgage market that targets Black and Latinx communities with financially exploitative subprime loans, which is the phenomenon known as reverse redlining.
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1982
The War on Drugs is greatly expanded by the Reagan administration. This expansion begins when Nancy Reagan launches her “Just Say No” campaign this year at an elementary school in Oakland, California. The Reagan administration passes a slew of zero tolerance drug policies which dramatically increases incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses. This campaign uses media propaganda to create an association with drugs and Black people as well as a delineation between powder cocaine and crack cocaine. Powder and crack cocaine have the same chemical makeup however powder cocaine is more processed, more expensive, and used more in affluent white communities. Crack cocaine is cheaper and so it targeted poor Black communities while protecting the affluent white communities who used the same substance.
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1982
As part of his larger economic deregulation initiative, Reagan cuts Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) budget in half, and, by 1985, this leads to the unavailability of public housing for 3.3 million people who qualify for it, largely affecting communities of color due to the racialized nature of public housing. On top of this, Reagan’s HUD and Justice Department did not enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, allowing banks to continue redlining without sanctions or prosecution.
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1982
The Broken Window Theory is published by James Wilson and George Kelling. It promotes a higher volume of arrests for “smaller” crimes in order to reduce “major” crime rates. This theory is popularized by Mayor Rudy Guilliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton of NYC and it leads to increased arrests and police presence in predominantly Black and Latinx areas.
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1986
Congress passes the Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sets a minimum of a 10-year prison sentence for narcotics possession. It also distinguishes between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, with crack cocaine having longer prison sentences despite its identical composition to powder cocaine. Powder cocaine was predominantly used in wealthy, white communities while crack cocaine was used more in lower-income Black communities. This act increased disproportionate incarceration because of the way it targeted Black communities.
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1991
Rodney King is brutally beaten by a group of police officers in L.A., enduring skull fractures, broken bones, and brain damage. The grand jury charges 4 officers with excessive force and assault with a deadly weapon but fails to indict the 17 officers that stood by, watched the attack, and did nothing. Despite the 15 minute beating being recorded on camera, all 4 officers are acquitted in 1992. The acquittals spark outrage and unrest in the Black community, leading to large scale protests that bring racist police brutality to the national stage. The California Governor declares a state of emergency and utilizes the Insurrection Act by deploying 20,000 military troops. This is used as precedent for future deployment of troops in response to Black movements and protests.
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1994
Bill Clinton signs the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that mandates life sentences for three-time federal crime offenders. It also requires that states applying for federal grants must show that the number of people incarcerated for violent crimes and the length of their prison sentences has increased. It also overturned the Higher Education Act of 1965 that permitted people to receive the pell grant while incarcerated.
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1995
John DiIulio (criminologist) presents the Super Predator Theory to Bill Clinton. This theory identifies Black children as people who have “no respect for human life and no sense of the future.” Black children were seen as dangerous and remorseless. This leads to the criminalization of Black children, harsher punishments, and increased police presence in predominantly Black schools.
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1996
The Oakland, California School Board passes a resolution unanimously recognizing Ebonics as an official language rather than a dialect of English so that Black students could be instructed in their language. Within the resolution, the school board recognizes its failure to educate Black children up to this point. This resolution is hotly contested and it is known as the 1996 Ebonics Controversy.
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1996
Clinton signs the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. One of the provisions changed habeas corpus so that it is harder for people to appeal sentencing. This affected Black and Latinx communities because Black and Latinx men are incarcerated at a disproportionate rate.
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1998
Subprime loans, loans with higher interest rates, account for 51% of refinance loans in predominantly African American neighborhoods, compared to 9% in white neighborhoods. By 2000, these racially targeted subprime mortgages increased to 18%, compared to 2% in 1993.
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2006
According to the “Residential Segregation after the Fair Housing Act” published by the American Bar Association, 53% of housing loans given to Black borrowers and 46% of those given to Latinx borrowers were subprime; as opposed to the 18% given to white borrowers.
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2007
The Subprime Mortgage Crisis leads to the housing market crash that disproportionately affects communities of color, especially in terms of foreclosures, due to the higher rates of subprime loans in Black and Latinx communities. This furthers housing segregation and wealth inequality.
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2007
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 rules that voluntary integration programs are unconstitutional because race is explicitly used to determine student school assignments, even though it is used for positive reasons.
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2009- 2010
According to the Center for American Progress, Black children are more than 3 times as likely to be suspended than white kids and 39% of all expulsions were issued to Black children.
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2012
Trayvon Martin is shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George. Zimmerman Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie with his hood up, reflecting an image that is commonly used to criminalize Black children This is seen in schools where hoods, hats, bandanas, and durags are prohibited because they are perceived as markers of criminality and gang affiliation when worn by Black children. Black Lives Matter was sparked with the murder of Trayvon Martin and the aquittal of Zimmerman.
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2014
Around 12 pm–in broad daylight –18–year–old, unarmed Mike Brown is shot and killed by white officer Darren Wilson and his body is left in the street for four hours afterwards. His murder and the subsequent disrespect of his body sparked pain and protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Darren Wilson is put on paid leave until he is acquitted by a grand jury in November, which sparks another round of protests. The governor of Ferguson ordered 2,200 National Guard Troops, continuing the legacy of the response to the Rodney King protests in 1992. The brutal murder of Mike Brown is a symptom of the criminalization of Black children and the city’s response only perpetuated the characterization of Black pain as criminal and violent.
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2014
12-year-old Tamir Rice is shot and killed by white officer Timothy Loehmann in Cleveland, Ohio after responding to a call about a “juvenile” pulling a gun in and out of his pants, even though the caller stated, “it’s probably fake.” Tamir Rice was playing in a snowy park with a pellet gun and Loehmann shot him within 2 seconds of exiting his police car, stating that he believed the gun was real and that Tamir was 20 years old. Loehmann was fired from the department two and a half years after murdering Tamir Rice and was never charged. The overestimation of danger and the lack of response from the Cleveland PD is a symptom of the inability of racist people to see Black children as children.
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2015
Sandra Bland, an outspoken BLM activist, is pulled over by state trooper Brian Encina for not signalling a lane change. He orders her out of the car when she refuses to put out her cigarette and when she repeatedly refuses to exit the car he threatens to “light [her] up” with a taser. She was then arrested for “assaulting an officer” and three days later she is found dead in her jail cell. Her death was ruled a suicide, even though that is hotly disputed. The death of Sandra Bland shifts the conversation of Black Lives Matter to include women, making the movement more intersectional and bringing the dangers of living as a Black woman to the forefront. Attention is called to the violence against Black women in the justice system, in the medical field, and in education. #sayhername is coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in order to highlight the violence faced by Black women. This was a major turning point in the Movement for Black Lives.
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2016
A five year old girl is arrested in her kindergarten class in Fairmount Park Elementary School. Her teacher took away her jelly beans to conduct a math demonstration, which triggered an emotional response. Officers were called in and arrested the girl. They found that the handcuffs were too big for her wrists and so they cuffed her biceps.
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2020
Tony McDade, a Black transgender man, is killed by a police officer in Tallahassee, Florida. The officer’s name is yet to be released (as of 4 weeks from the murder). McDade’s murder has increased necessary conversations of intersectionality within the Black Lives Matter movement, as the liberation of the most marginalized within the Black community will lead to the liberation of the Black community in its entirety. Being at the intersection of Black and trans identities puts individuals at greater risk, with Black trans women facing abhorrently high murder rates. This highlights the fact that this conversation is not just about police brutality but about all violence rooted in white supremacy.
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2020
George Floyd, a 46 year old Black man, is murdered by white officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 second – even after he lost consciousness – while 3 other officers watched and did nothing. Only after national protests and unrest, all 4 officers are fired, Chauvin is charged with 2nd degree murder, and the other 3 officers are charged with aiding and abetting 2nd degree murder. Initially the Chauvin was only charged with first degree murder. Floyd’s murder, during a a time of increased anxiety and awareness of racial disparities due to COVID-19, sparked protests all around the country and the world. His murder fuels the police abolition movement and starting a chain reaction of defunding police and removing them from schools.
