Introduction: African Americans: Official and Unofficial Violence in America

Maintaining Race

The objective of the police or paddy rollers, armed White men during the enslavement, was to chase down and punish enslaved Africans in the southern states who tried to run away from bondage. After the Civil War, and during the late 19th century and early 20th century, the police were used to monitor and control the immigrant populations in the northern cities. Hence, what appeared in 1865 to be a new day for Africans morphed into the old day as police who had been created to ensure that Blacks in the South would remain on the plantations shifted around 1885 and afterwards to becoming a principal force in the control of northern cities. Later with the rise of the migrant Black refugees in northern cities seeking jobs while escaping the harsh conditions in the South and with the rising numbers of Irish, Italian and Jewish migrants to the urban areas of the North, the police force was reinvented as an agency to maintain control of society by intimidation to retain the concept of racial superiority of Whites and the racial inferiority of Blacks. As unacceptable as these ideas are at the current time among the intelligent Whites in this society, there still lurks the medieval ideas of race ingrained for centuries in the mentality of many Whites who are victims of false propaganda and who have declined to learn either from history or science. What caused the deaths of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, and scores of other Black bodies murdered, often with the mutilation of multiple gunshots?

During the time Africans were enslaved there was little use of police forces for the masses of Blacks, with the exception of those who patrols the interstices between plantations, to secure the countryside from possible Black revolts. Thus, every Black person away from a plantation and without permission of the slaveholder could be stopped, questioned, and brutalized as a punishment for being off of the plantation without permission. This would be the pattern adopted later by the White regime in South Africa when it wanted to ensure that Blacks from the townships were not simply loitering or wandering around in White areas. Therefore, one can understand how difficult it was for the southern Paddy Rollers to patrol vast areas of the south where Africans were known to escape quite regularly.

Physical and psychological domination of Black people had become such a part of plantation life as the horrific beatings, cutting off of fingers and damaging the Achilles’ tendon of those Africans who tried to run away and other less imaginative ways of pain, created a pattern to be used by southern Whites against Black bodies. After the Civil War and during Reconstruction the rise of the White southern vigilante movement as exemplified in the Ku Klux Klan became the lead organization peddling fear and pain to Black communities. Perhaps between 1890 and 1920 African people in the South lived through the nadir of American social relations, a period of ruthlessness, murder, threats of murder, abuse of women, killing of Black World War I veterans, and lynching of Black men. My parents were born during this incredible period that painted their images of White people dressed in white sheets and hoods as devils meaning no good for Black people. I shall soon return to this era in this introduction to JBS’ special issue in memory of the many innocent lives lost to police and ordinary White citizens whose gaze at Black bodies saw only inferiority and violence.

McIntyre’s (1992) book, Criminalizing a Race: Free Blacks During Slavery, demonstrates that the English enslaved, killed, maimed, imprisoned, and exported to colonies many people, subjugated the Africans in barracoons, raped and murdered those who protested, and claimed that Blacks were inferior beings. The exploiters would even abuse the un-enslaved Blacks in northern cities to dominate Black bodies. A more recent book by Muhammad (2010), The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, following McIntyre and Alexander (2012), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcertaion in the Age of Colorblindedness, explains the nature of the criminalizing of Black people by the police and prison system. When there are more Blacks in prison today than were enslaved in1850 it means that the penalization for Blackness, especially where Blacks are likely to be the first arrested and the longest imprisoned shows that the Black body is under threat in a racist society.

The problem with the concept of race, which must of us are agreed is not a scientific term, although racism has real consequences, is that it elevates the idea of perception of value, worth, character, and importance. The ranking of “races” is the key crime with the concept in its regular use by ordinary people. We live under a regime, that has existed for centuries and must come to an end, where Europeans have created a ladder of racial value where Africans are at the bottom of the humanity. What this means is that the gaze of White people at the Black body regardless to its position, posture or pose has already been corrupted by the on-going philosophy of race hierarchy situated in the European mind since the 17th century. A White policeperson who sees a young Black man in his early 20s seems willing to confront the Black man with an aggression not measured out to a young White man in a similar circumstance. Muhammad has called this gaze and attitude “the condemnation of Blackness.” I believe that this happens because the police is apt to have imbibed the intoxicant of “race” that counts Black as inferior, more criminal, vile, violent, and guilty than Whites who are perceived to be at the top of the ladder. It is this regime that must be overcome for us to reach the level of humanity thinking without ranking of ethnic or “race” in the equation.

Black bodies are not inherently less than White bodies but the gaze of a racist, even without consciousness of racism, has been prepared by the history, tradition, and ritual in the American society to punish Blackness because of the assumption of its negativity. That is precisely why solving the issue of police brutality through Ibram Kendi’s (2017) “policies” proposal will not prevent racist actions from breaking out in other sectors of society. It is not only the symptoms that must be studied isolated, and crushed, but the generator of all racist ideologies which is the concept of hierarchy of races grounded in the machinery of ancient patriarchy. This is a decades-long struggle, but it must be engaged in order to elevate humanity over all forms of racial rankings. When our gaze is upon a human it will not matter what is the complexion, creed, gender, or hair texture; these are only specifically significant in terms of cultural origin and activity.

The Focus of the Special Issues

Our aim in this special issue is to share with our readers a combination of research and context to bring about a unity of knowledge in order to advance a rational society. Research without knowledge of the context often leads to sterile solutions to problems that are grounded in social explanations closer to actual events. History, often the source of context, must be accompanied by research that activates human solutions through the initiation of policies, protocols, and actions that assert the commonality of humanity. I offer the following historical information as a lesson because during the Black Lives Matter campaign many people have voiced skepticism about the overwhelming real experiences of African Americans in the contemporary context; hence, I have opted to provide a window through which African Americans have often viewed the American society or have often forgotten the window hidden in their historical homes. Whatever the case we share a common ground with others in the American society as humans and must seek to cross the river without losing a soul.

An Old Current History

I was born in 1942 just a little over a couple of decades after the violent death of Mary Turner, who was killed May 19, 1918, a year before my father and mother were born in Lowndes County, Georgia. Mary was a married mother with two children, Ocie Lee and Leaster, who was lynched for speaking in defense of her husband. She had been devastated by the lynching of her husband by a White mob on May 18, 1918, the day before her own death.

My family’s immediate environment in Georgia was the appallingly squalid social climate created by the oppressive anti-Black conditions created by the White plantation bosses who needed Black workers for labor but who paid little or nothing for the labor and even abused the workers physically for the smallest complaints. The Turners’ murders had been built out of heinous brutality. As the NAACP told the story after an investigation by its head Walter White, an abusive White plantation owner, Hampton Smith, had been shot and killed by a Black worker when a White mob rode through Black neighborhoods grabbing Black men and killing them until at least thirteen had been murdered at the hands of the mob. This rampage caused fear in the Black communities as there were no authorities who stepped in to save Black lives from death.

There were many racially driven mobs during this period in the South. It was the apex of the mountain of lynching and wanton murder of Blacks in the South. The nearby county of Brooks in Georgia had the highest rates of lynching in the nation during this era. In its reports for the period the NAACP used Mary Turner’s murder as an emblem of its campaign against lynching (Armstrong, 2008).

The national outcry by the leadership of the African American community was persistent and insistent; the NAACP led the battle against the convict labor system where White farmers paid sheriffs the fines that Black men incurred as a result of minor infractions so that those men could be used to work on the surrounding plantations. One of the workers that Smith “purchased” by paying his fine was Sidney Johnson who had been convicted of playing the game of dice (White, 1918).

Blackmon (2008) gives a thorough analysis of this system in Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the civil War to World War II. In what was considered by many Blacks a criminal conspiracy state legislatures and local administrations passed rules that criminalized Blacks for small infractions in order to get laborers for White farmers (Blackmon, 2008). Johnson working for Smith found him to be difficult, cruel, and disrespectful; he endured several whippings at the hands of Smith who believed that no Black would dare to challenge him. Smith was even reported to have beaten Mary Turner, and her husband, Hayes, threatened Smith (Ramos, 2010). Within a few days Hayes was arrested, convicted by a White jury, and sentenced to a chain gang. On the other hand, Sidney Johnson had endured several beatings at the hands of Smith, including a severe one when Johnson refused to work when he was ill. Smith also had a violent history with several other Black workers. He had once beaten Mary Turner, and after that incident her husband, Hayes Turner, threatened Smith (Meyers, 2006). Turner was convicted by an all-White jury and sentenced to a chain gang. Black workers, though mostly unarmed because of the rules disallowing Blacks to buy weapons, were very angry with the arrest of Hayes. Subsequently, Sidney Johnson went to Hampton Smith’s house and shot him and wounding Smith’s wife. Johnson fled to Valdosta, Georgia where he stayed for several days before he was captured and lynched. The body of Sidney Johnson was dragged down the biggest street in Valdosta, Paterson, so that the Black community could be intimidated into silence. More than 500 Blacks fled the town (Gibson, 2002; White, 1918).

The White mob transformed itself into police, jury and executioner, killing at least 13 Black people during a 2-week rampage. On May 17, 1918 Will Head and Will Thompson were captured in two different locations and murdered with nearly 700 bullets being pumped into their bodies. Julius Jones was also lynched the same day (Apel, 2004, pp. 150–152; Bennett, 1977; White, 1918). Hayes Turner was also arrested since he was known to have had a personal conflict with Smith. He was placed in jail in Big 1912, the local name of the city jail, and held there for a few hours until County Sheriff Wade took him out of prison ostensibly to move him to Quitman, Georgia, 18 miles away. Actually, he was delivered to a waiting mob about 3 miles outside of the city, lynched on an oak tree, and left hanging over the weekend for 2 days. Several other Blacks were also arrested and lynched.

In addition to the identified victims of the mob, later in the week the bodies of three unidentified Black men were taken from the Little River, but no one came forth to confirm their identities and the bodies soon disappeared .

Mary Turner, who was 8 months pregnant, spoke to anyone who would listen denouncing the murders and especially the lynching of her husband Hayes. She admitted that her husband had been in conflict with Smith but denied that he had anything to do with his killing. She said that those who killed Hayes should be arrested and pay with their lives. Soon the Whites, probably some who had murdered her husband, turned on her apparently to teach her and the community a lesson (White, 1918: 221–223).

Warned that the mob was coming for her, Mary fled her home and Valdosta and was captured around noon on May 19th. Hundreds of White men and women dragged the pregnant Mary Turner to the bank of the Little River near Folsom Bridge just at the border of Lowndes and Brooks county where they tied her hands and feet together and hung her by the ankles, poured gasoline on her clothes and set her body afire. It was reported that they slit open her belly with a knife used to kill hogs until the “unborn babe” crashed to the ground and gave two feeble cries and its head was crushed by a member of the mob with the heel of his boot (De Longoria, 2006, pp. 1, 77, 142; White, 1918). Then members of the mob shot hundreds of rounds of bullets into her body. The major newspaper in Georgia the Atlanta Constitution wrote an article lined with the sub-title “Fury of the people is unrestrained.” She was later cut down from the tree and buried with her child next to the spot with a whiskey bottle marking the grave (Georgia Historical Society, 2010; White, 1918).

On a personal note, two of my nieces and one of my nephews, are the great grandchildren of Mary Turner. History reflects the multiplicity of our lived experiences and it is out of the chaos of the past that we seek to re-order the present to assure our vision of victorious consciousness over all oppressive and exploitative examples of human madness.

Special Journey