During Thursday’s Congressional Black Caucus panel discussion addressing reshaping the criminal justice system and the role activists play in the movement to address issues affecting African-Americans, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) spoke about the oppression Blacks have faced throughout the history of this nation.
Since the first Africans set foot on American soil in 1619, Blacks have faced an insurmountable level of oppression despite the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, reconstruction after the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. African-Americans have “not been able to breathe.”
Jeffries drew a direct parallel between the plight of Africans in America with the final words spoken by Eric Garner, who died after being placed in an illegal chokehold by NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
Congressman Jeffries said, “I’ve often reflected on the fact that those words, I can’t breathe, if you would just change the first one – we can’t breathe – in many ways represents the struggle of African-Americans in this country.”
“From the very beginning at the founding of the republic, we had to deal with chattel slavery,” said Jeffries.
The Congressman from New York called the enslavement of Africans “one of the worst crimes perpetrated against humanity.”
Jeffries said, “Chattel slavery lasted until the Civil War and then there was a brief moment of enlightenment around the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, and the 14th Amendment, the equal protection clause, and of course, the 15th Amendment, which dealt with the right to vote.”
He said the period of reconstruction was “quickly abandoned” and replaced with Jim Crow and the Black codes. These oppressive institutions allowed for the “systematic lynching of African-Americans all designed to suppress our capacity.”
After the Civil Rights Movement and assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Nixon was elected. Three years into Nixon’s term, he launched the war on drugs. Rep. Jeffries said, “At that time, 350,000 people were incarcerated in America; today there are 2.2 million.”
“We’ve gone from chattel slavery into the Jim Crow era and in a few years after that was ended legislatively, the period of mass incarceration began,” said Jeffries.
“And so Eric Garner says I can’t breathe, but the African-American experience has been we’ve been largely unable to breathe free of systematic, organized, consistent oppression.”
While concluding his remarks, Congressman Jeffries said, “That’s why the struggle has been so necessary and why at the end of the day we’ve got to do all that we can, working in part with the activists on the outside and the legislators on the inside to give the African-American community and all others across this country the room to really experience the American Dream and be given some room to breathe.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/frontlinepbs/status/777667433981177857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This is too adorable. That baby can’t be anymore than 18 months old. Hair must just grow in the family.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AsToldByBrina/status/777131642704060416/video/1
An innocent man with car trouble gunned down in the middle of the road because of white people’s fear. Got dammit!
Things Black people can’t do:
Have car trouble.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyGuterman/status/777970420951683073
This makes my blood boil. The guy in helicopter says #TerenceCrutcher looks like a “bad dud”. All he saw was a big black man. How is he bad?
A man standing with his arms up.
What would make him a bad dude.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/777986723221479425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Two terrific comments from POU:
Comment 1
This comment is PURE GOLD:
https://twitter.com/DylanByers/status/777896937609629696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/777682016972206080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/777946014418399233
Dante Boykin @DanteB4u
Heading home from a college class, car broke down, needing assistance, cop killed him for breathing while black w/hands up. #TerenceCrutcher
Nick Jack Pappas @Pappiness
The world we live in: People upset when a black man takes a knee, but unaffected when a black man takes a bullet. #TerenceCrutcher
Wesley Lowery ✔ @WesleyLowery
beyond details of encounter, #terencecrutcher latest example of officers watching as someone they’ve shot bleeds out https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/09/19/man-fatally-shot-by-tulsa-police-was-unarmed-chief-says-as-disturbing-video-is-released/ …
https://twitter.com/atane/status/777632484657926146
https://twitter.com/BrianHudson718/status/777634819912204289?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/rodimusprime/status/777644607504908288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/chrisalexander_/status/777684070386044929?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
LIPS PURSED
https://twitter.com/JMKTV/status/777911695993896960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
September 19, 2016, 05:15 pm
Trump to do town hall at black church with Hannity
Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a town hall event with Sean Hannity of Fox News at a black church in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Republican presidential nominee will be hosted by Reverend Darrell Scott, an outspoken Trump supporter, at the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights.
The network indicates the event will specifically “discuss the core issues and concerns surrounding African-Americans this 2016 election cycle.”
“I heard the campaign was doing something with Pastor Scott, who is a friend, and I said let’s put it on TV,” Hannity tells The Hill. “They agreed.
Donald Trump has had a series of speeches in predominantly black churches and he is clearly continuing that outreach.”
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/778005578979258368
Another black man MURDERED by a cop and taken from his family.
ARREST #BettyShelby NOW for the murder of #TerenceCrutcher. His hands were in the air, dammit. No gun found on him or in his vehicle.
https://twitter.com/pannlewis44/status/777991208069165056
Hillary is calling for trust between law enforcement & the Muslim community. How can that be when law enforcement profile & harass Muslims? How can trust be built between law enforcement & the black community when cops keep killing unarmed black people? We need police reform. Laws changed.
https://twitter.com/NCRMuseum/status/777703952758472704
https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump/status/777923418012340224
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/777960452349321217
They all backed away and left him laying there to bleed out and die. Inhuman mofos.
https://twitter.com/BillyCorben/status/777965480401395713
https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/777965303921799168
https://twitter.com/4n0nc47/status/777973937464500224
https://twitter.com/JusCallMeHerb/status/777974730506792960
https://twitter.com/tulsaworld/status/777959337113313280
This is unbearable. God help us. It just keeps happening.
Love her smile!
https://twitter.com/tuckqueen/status/776962540031074304
https://twitter.com/YBGB_Institute/status/777930589617922048
https://twitter.com/NatUrbanLeague/status/776858791589584896
https://twitter.com/MDS_cj/status/777905705298776069
Well. Well.
uh huh
uh huh
https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/777877501146124290
SMH All that BLEACH, it’s done a number on her brain.
http://www.smiley-lol.com/smiley/personnages/fillebisou.gif
So now ‘terror’ is the carrot the media is dangling before Americans in this election cycle.
Gordon Parks took this photograph of the Fontenelle Children outside their Harlem in 1967….The pictures tell a heart-breaking story of destitution as the family of ten struggles to survive in their tiny $70 a month home with no income and the constant threat of violence.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=768074650001333&set=gm.1686479171675355&type=3&theater
Mr. Gordon Parks used his gift for photography to advocate for those in need as well as showing the world a true record of the Black community with its levels of achievements and successes despite the oppressive efforts to keep it down.
https://youtu.be/pH_OBpXZwoo&rel=0
https://youtu.be/KbuxYEg_6tE&rel=0
After the Civil War, the south should have been occupied for multiple generations, perhaps a hundred years as it turns out. Those white folks wanted revenge, pure and simple. That and free / cheap labor.
ALL OF THIS.
Tell the TRUTH and shame the DEVILS.
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/777719259069681664
UH UH UH
https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/777869454126424071
In America, racial oppression is not ancient history
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/in-america-racial-oppression-is-not-ancient-history/2012/02/07/gIQAr6KXxQ_story.html
When talking about his childhood in Earle, Ark., during the 1920s and ’30s, my father always mentions a sheriff who rented out prisoners to wealthy landowners. Black men arrested on charges such as vagrancy and drunkenness, or just for being “uppity,” were forced to pay off their fines by working in coal mines, cotton fields, turpentine camps and timber mills.
“People would come to town from all over the county on weekends, riding wagons and mules,” my dad recalls. “Naturally, guys who had worked hard all week on the farm would want to have a little fun. They might buy a half a pint, get drunk. Then the sheriff would show up, and the next thing they knew they’d be working on a plantation and you might never hear from them again.”
The practice, known as “convict leasing,” is explored in a PBS documentary, “Slavery by Another Name,” that airs Monday. For more than 80 years, from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War II, roughly 800,000 people throughout the South were forced to work under circumstances that were as bad, if not worse, than slavery. The death rate at some work camps and mines was as high as 40 percent.
For me, the film doesn’t carry the same power as listening to a parent talk about growing up in those days, but it concludes by making the same important point that Dad often does.
“This is not ancient history,” he tells me. “This actually happened in my lifetime.”
And the effects of centuries of racial oppression don’t just disappear in one or two generations — nor do the attitudes that gave rise to it.
Douglas A. Blackmon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the book on which the documentary is based, also titled “Slavery by Another Name,” and a contributing editor to The Washington Post, sums up how America’s economic system was rigged to benefit one group at the expense of another.
https://twitter.com/Lexual__/status/774960861224046592
https://twitter.com/CarlosNotWeird/status/775356614605959169
Good Morning 😊, Everyone 😆
https://twitter.com/3ChicsPolitico/status/777733080077312000
Good morning, everyone!
SG2, hope the hubby is feeling better.
Thank you. He’s feeling better. He has Dr appointment this morning. We’ll see what he has to say.
Good Morning. SG2. Thank you for the words to live by for this day.