Sponsored in collaboration with Santa Cruz Writes, a prize of $1,000 and publication in phren-Z is given annually for a poem. The winner will also be invited to give a reading at the sixth annual Morton Marcus Memorial Reading at the University of California in Santa Cruz in November. Stephen Kessler will judge. Using the online submission system, submit up to three poems of no more than five pages each with a $15 entry fee by September 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
phren-Z, Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Contest, 184 Kenny Court, Santa Cruz, CA 95065. Jory Post, Cofounder.
Who travels with the night? We all do. Deep within ourselves we carry distrust and doubts, and these negativities fuse into our molecular specifics, a merger that not only permanently mottles the walls of our memory but also causes questions to be randomly released by totally unrelated happenings: for instance, the hue associated with two or three of us stealthily gathering dark brown pecans out of the tall, uncut grass; stuffing the oval-shaped, sharply-pointed spheroids into our jacket pockets; and then hopping the fence and laughing together while cracking the hard shells with a small hammer and eagerly eating those crunchy but soft seeds we had flinched from our neighbor’s back yard; that and meeting a date at Loretta’s Praline shop on Frenchmen Street on some soft autumn evening a half hour or so before sunset. Some how the colors of those two different experiences connect together and make me think of the shape and shade of my mother’s eyes, the same eyes that looked at my brother with such tenderness the time he was sick, and had a rough time of it, coughing, repeatedly, seemingly unendingly, coughing hard coughs, hacking up a slimy greenish-gray stuff which she, our mother, patiently wiped away with a hand-cloth while pressing a cool, moist towel to his forehead, leaning over him like a protective willow tree on a hot day. I’ve never forgotten the way she looked directly at me when I asked if he was going to be alright, and the motion her eyes made as she lowered them back to his, and gently touching his cheek she simply said, yes, god willing, and both at that moment and always since that moment I questioned why would god not be willing to let my brother live.
Men outside of the office of black Chicago businessman Jesse Binga, summer of 1919. “During Chicago’s riot,” writes David Krugler, “African-Americans gathered on street corners in the riot zone to share news and to form self-defense forces.” Photo by Jun Fujita. Courtesy of the Chicago History Museum (ICHi-65481).
In Longview, Texas, in July 1919, S.L. Jones, who was a teacher and a local distributor of the blacknewspaper the Chicago Defender, investigated the suspicious death of Lemuel Walters. Walters was a black man who was accused of raping a white woman, jailed, and ultimately found dead under “mysterious” circumstances. When the Defender published a story about Walters’ death, asserting that the alleged rape had been a love affair and Walters’ death the result of a lynching, Jones came under attack, beaten by the woman’s brothers.
Hearing a rumor that Jones was in trouble, Dr. C.P. Davis, a black physician and friend of the teacher, tried to get law enforcement to protect him from further violence. When it became clear that this help was not forthcoming, Davis organized two-dozen black volunteers to guard Jones’ house. That same night, a mob surrounded the dwelling. Four armed white men knocked on the door, then tried to ram it down. The black defenders, who were arranged around Jones’ property, opened fire. A half-hour gun battle ensued, in which several attackers were wounded; the posse retreated.
Hearing the town’s fire bell ringing to summon reinforcements, Jones and Davis went into hiding, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against a larger mob. Davis borrowed a soldier’s uniform, put it on, and took the first of several trains out of the area. At one point, he asked a group of black soldiers he found in a train car to conceal him in their ranks, which they did, contributing to his disguiseby giving him an overseas cap and a gas mask. Later that day, Jones also managed to escape. But their successful resistance and flight were bittersweet victories: Before the episode was over, Davis’ and Jones’ homes were burned, along with Davis’ medical practice and the meeting place of the town’s Negro Business Men’s League. Davis’ father-in-law was killed in the violence.
In his new book, 1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back, David F. Krugler, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville, looks at the actions of people like Jones and Davis, who resisted white incursions against the black community through the press, the courts, and armed defensive action. The year 1919 was a notable one for racial violence, with major episodes of unrest in Chicago;Washington; and Elaine, Arkansas, and many smaller clashes in both the North and the South. (James Weldon Johnson, then the field secretary of the NAACP, called this time of violence the “Red Summer.”) White mobs killed 77 black Americans, including 11 demobilized servicemen (according to the NAACP’s magazine, the Crisis). The property damage to black businesses and homes—attacks on which betrayed white anxiety over new levels of black prosperity and social power—was immense.
The history of black responses to the violence of 1919—which ranged from the use of a single weapon against a home invader, to the organization of defensive posses like Davis’ that were meant to protect potential victims of lynching, to the deployment of groups of men who patrolled city streets during unrest—makes it clear that armed self-defense, far from being an invention of Malcolm X and the Black Power movement, is a strategy with deep roots. As we celebrate the 50thanniversary of the civil rights movement, the story of nonviolence—a beautiful strategy with uncontestable moral force—has taken center stage. However the story of active self-defense against violence—a tradition that developed before, and then alongside, nonviolent resistance—is too often dismissed or simply ignored. Even before slavery had been outlawed, black Americans took up arms when their lives and livelihoods were threatened. Their experiences make the familiar history of marches and peaceful protest more complex. But the story of the civil rights struggle is incomplete without them.
Why was there a spike in violence in 1919? Krugler argues that black service members’ experience in World War I was one of the catalysts. In many places, demobilized black veterans, having fought for their country, had a diminished tolerance for racial discrimination—and their families, having sacrificed on the homefront, felt the same way. Meanwhile, white civilians resented what they perceived as an excess of pride (what an Army captain, registering his concern with the Military Intelligence Division, called “social aspirations”) in those who had served. Servicemen were allowed to wear their uniforms for three months after being “demobbed.” Georgian Wilbur Little was lynched in April 1919, reportedly for the sin of wearing his after the cutoff date—a crime that suggests how much the vision of black men in uniform threatened the racial regime.
The black community’s defensive actions in response to racial violence were also shaped by the war. Veterans took the initiative in armed self-defense, using their combat experience and knowledge of tactics and organization. But communities around them—many of whom had worked for the war effort in civilian capacities—were also energized by their wartime experiences and by the presence of the returned service members. (C.P. Davis and S.L. Jones were not veterans, but they were affected by the prevailing climate nonetheless. Davis’ escape took advantage of the cover provided by his borrowed uniform and relied on solidarity from black soldiers who were willing to vouch for him.)
Meanwhile, writers and journalists in the black press—some of whom had served—turned out prose that was increasingly bold, calling for armament and self-defense, and shaping the image of what came to be called the New Negro. That year, poet Claude McKay published his sonnet “If We Must Die” in the socialist magazine the Liberator:
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Activists followed these calls for resistance with attempts to work within the legal system to defend those who fought back. After each episode of violence, the NAACP took new legal initiative in prosecuting white rioters and representing black people who had acted to defend themselves. Sometimes, as in the aftermath of the violence in Longview, Texas, NAACP lawyers were able to get prisoners who had been found with weapons released by arguing that their actions were taken in self-defense. These legal victories—though somewhat diminished by the difficulty lawyers had in landing convictions of white rioters—were nonetheless significant.
While there is a notable cluster of examples of black communities fighting back in the racial conflicts of 1919, the history of armed self-defense goes back even further. Law professor Nicholas Johnson points to fugitive slaves who armed themselves against slave-catchers as some of the earliest examples of the practice. In another dark period of racial violence at the end of the 19th century, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a journalist and investigator of lynching, advocated “boycott, emigration, and the press” as weapons against white aggression, outlining the rationale in her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. When those peaceful strategies failed, Wells-Barnett thought a more active strategy was the answer, observing: “The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.” For this reason, she wrote, “[A] Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
Some citizens caught up in racial violence at the turn of the 20th century shared Wells-Barnett’s philosophy. Krugler cites instances of self-defense in turn-of-the-century racial strife in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898; Evansville, Indiana, in 1903; Atlanta in 1906; and Springfield, Illinois, in 1908. In Evansville, Krugler writes, “[A]pproximately thirty black men assembled to drive away white vigilantes attempting to break into the county jail to lynch a black prisoner.” In Springfield, “[B]lack snipers fired on white rioters from a saloon window, and twelve armed black men formed a patrol and fired on members of a mob leaving the site of one attack.”
Members of a white mob run with bricks in hand during the Chicago race riot of July and August 1919. Photo by Jun Fujita. Courtesy of the Chicago History Museum (ICHi-65495).
In his research on the unrest of 1919, Krugler found evidence of self-defense that was both highly coordinated and ad hoc. “In Chicago,” he told me, “we have examples of individual stockyard workers who go to work, are attacked, and turn and fight. That’s not premeditated; that’s a human response to a life-threatening danger and risk—but it still counts as self-defense.” Also during the unrest in Chicago, “The veterans of the 8th Regiment put on their uniforms, found weapons, and took to the streets to try to stop the mob violence”—a preplanned action that took advantage of their military training and status in the community.
One of the problems with writing a history of armed self-defense during episodes of racial violence lies in establishing what actually happened. The events are obscured by the motivations of the authors of many of the historical sources, as well as the simple fog of war—these conflicts were complex events unfolding, in some cases, over many city blocks. Krugler triangulates between sources, looking at black and white newspapers, records of the tribunals held after some of the riots, and the reports of investigators from the Military Intelligence Division and the Bureau of Investigation (as the FBI was called in its first two decades of operation).
Comparing-and-contrasting these sources, as Krugler does in a section on the Chicago unrest called “The Fictional Riot,” shows how self-defense could look very different depending on the point of view of the witness. The soldiers from the 8th Regiment, who, black onlookers reported, instilled a sense of calm in the community merely by their presence, showed up very differently in the Chicago Daily News’coverage. One detachment of veterans was described as “a group of twelve discharged negro soldiers, all armed,” who had “terrorized small groups of whites in various parts of the south side all afternoon.” The Herald-Examiner reported that several thousand decommissioned members of the 8th Regiment had stormed the regiment’s armory, wounding more than 50 people as they seized weapons. “Black Chicagoans, menaced by gangs and mistreated by the police, now [confronted] a white-written narrative about the riot that cast them as the wrongdoers,” Krugler writes. This was one of the drawbacks of self-defense, which, in a racist society, put those who resisted in perilous positions, vulnerable to further violence and legal prosecution.
Americans have wholeheartedly adopted the history of nonviolent protest as part of our national mythology. But we’re hesitant to commemorate the history of black self-defense. As historian Peniel E. Joseph writes, radical strains of resistance during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s—the activism of Malcolm X and the Black Power movement—are often remembered as “politically naïve, largely ineffectual, and ultimately stillborn.” Yet, Joseph (and a host of other historians who have looked anew at Black Power and related activism in the past decade or so) argues that the activists who believed in Black Power precepts of armed self-defense and radical self-determination were always a part of the civil rights movement, acting alongside people who believed in nonviolence. Joseph and other scholars of Black Power look at civil rights and Black Power as “part of the same historical family tree.”
Perhaps our eagerness to dismiss self-defense stems from the fact that it makes us confront uncomfortable questions about our present-day realities. The history of armed black self-defense is a story of individual resistance in the face of unfairness and of successful community organization in places where the dominant culture refused protection. Like the history of nonviolence, it’s a stirring story, reminding us of the real dangers black people faced and of their refusal to submit, despite the prospect of reprisal and the possibility of legal consequences. But given the fact that black Americans still face life-threatening violence at a disproportionate rate, and that some of this violence—now, as in years past—comes from officials sworn to protect and serve, the history of armed self-defense is less readily adaptable for anodyne commemorative purposes.
Still, this other aspect of civil rights history can be found even in the more traditional narratives, once you start to look. I asked Krugler to comment on the relationship between the history of self-defense and the dominant story of civil rights. He pointed to a recent article in the Washington Post about the unveiling of the Rosa Parks papers collection at the Library of Congress. The author, Michael E. Ruane, began the piece by referring to one of Parks’ childhood memories. Parks remembered staying up late with her grandfather as a young girl in rural Alabama, as he sat with a shotgun and guarded against possible attacks from the members of the Ku Klux Klan. “Even someone who’s a mainstay of the nonviolent part of the civil rights movement grew up understanding the importance of armed self-defense against racial terrorism,” Krugler pointed out. Rosa Parks was 6 years old in 1919.
With the death of Ralkina Jones on Sunday, the number of known black women who’ve died in law enforcement custody in the United States this month rose to five.
The first two caused a national stir. Sandra Bland’s alleged suicide by hanging in a Waller County, Texas, jail cell on July 13 sparked suspicion of foul play from her family members and advocates, prompting the hashtags #WhatHappenedToSandraBland, #SayHerName and #IfIDieInPoliceCustody to trend on social media. Bland was 28 years old.
The following day, Kindra Chapman died under similar circumstances. The 18-year-old’s death by asphyxiation in a Homewood, Alabama, jail cell was ruled a suicide Monday by a Jefferson County coroner — a conclusion with which Chapman’s family agrees, despite some outside suspicion.
Joyce Curnell, 50, was found dead in a North Charleston, South Carolina, jail cell on July 22, reports local television station WCBD. She was arrested for an outstanding bench warrant for shoplifting, and was seen at a local hospital the day before her death.
Ralkina Jones died Sunday by yet undetermined means at a Cleveland Heights, Ohio, jail. Police said she’d looked “lethargic” in her cell beforehand and was being shuttled back and forth from a local hospital the night she died, according to BuzzFeed. Jones was 37.
Most recently, officials found Raynetta Turner, a 43-year-old mother of eight, dead in a jail cell Monday in Mount Vernon, New York. Turner, who had been arrested for shoplifting at a food and restaurant supplier, also had multiple medical problems and was taken to a local hospital shortly after her arrest.
Sandra Bland’s sister, Sharon Cooper, at Bland’s funeral. Source: Christian K. Lee/AP
Five women. Five ages. Five different circumstances surrounding their deaths.
Each woman lost their lives in ways that sparked much-needed discussions around how state violence affects black women, specifically.
To claim the same factors caused all of their deaths would be a disservice to their individual experiences. But as incarcerated black women in a time when discussions of black death and anti-black violence are largely oriented around black men, what happened to Bland, Chapman, Curnell, Jones and Turner begs our broader understanding of the unique disparities they faced as a demographic — and the myths we need to dispel about them.
Here are 10 facts to help put these women’s deaths, and the suspicion surrounding them, in context:
1. Black women are disproportionately stopped
by the police.
Dashcam footage of Sandra Bland being stopped by Texas Department of Public Safety officers. Source: Uncredited/AP
It’s important, first, to understand how black women are targeted by the criminal justice system.
Bland was pulled over for failing to use her turn signal in Texas. But her being pulled over at all falls into a bigger national pattern: In 2013, for instance, more than 53% of all women stopped by the New York City police in 2013 were black. Black people overall make up just 27% of the city’s population, Micreports.
2. And they are more exposed to intersecting
forms of police violence than their peers.
Former Oklahoma City police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw. Source: Sue Ogrocki/AP
Black people are stopped, killed and incarcerated by American law enforcement at higher rates than almost any other demographic. But black women have an added danger to worry about: According to the think tank the CATO Institute, sexual misconduct was the second most-reported form of police misconduct in 2010.
A notable example of this sort of danger is former Officer Daniel Holtzclaw, who was accused of raping and assaulting 13 black women while on duty last year in Oklahoma City. He’s out on bond awaiting trial.
3. They are more likely to be incarcerated.
The Waller County, Texas, jail cell where Sandra Bland died. Source: Pat Sullivan/AP
Even as black women’s presence in jails and prisons declined 30.7% from 2000 to 2009, they are still nearly three times more likely to be incarcerated in the United States than white women, according to the Sentencing Project.
4. Black women don’t often die by suicide.
Men are far more likely to die by suicide than women, and suicide rates are far lower among black people — men and women alike — than any other demographic. But the same risk factors still apply: Previous suicide attempts, which Bland reportedly experienced, along with a history of depression and mental illness and feeling alone, are all risk factors no matter who experiences them.
Sandra Bland’s funeral procession. Source: Jonathan Gibby/Getty Images
5. But women are more likely to try than men.
Plus, women are generally more likely to express suicidal thoughts and make nonfatal attempts than men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
6. Black youth are killing themselves
at higher rates today than ever before…
At age 18, Chapman illustrated a particularly troubling statistic. According to a 2009 study funded, in part, by the National Institute of Mental Health, black American teenage girls are the most likely black teen demographic in the country to die by suicide.
These findings came a few years before another study published in 2015, which found the suicide rate for black children age 5 to 11 doubled between 1993 and 2012. By the end of that time span, black child suicide rates were “substantially above the rate for white children,” the New York Timesreports.
This was the first time a national study found black suicide rates to be higher than white suicide rates in any age group.
A girl stands near her mother near where a Brooklyn, New York, youth was shot and killed by New York City police in 2007. Source: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
7. …Even though depression and suicidal
thoughts aren’t always easy to see.
A facade of happiness and well-being does not always mean all is well. Depression and suicidal thoughts can be hidden, which is why it’s unwise — even dangerous — to presume that because Bland was starting a new job and seemed happy with her life, she could not have also been depressed.
8. Black people are less likely to receive treatment
for these symptoms than other groups.
This stigma and access issues around depression and mental health are highly pronounced among black Americans. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that although blacks are less likely than whites to have a severe depressive disorder, theirs tend to be more “chronic and severe,” and they are less likely to undergo treatment for it.
Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas. Source: Pat Sullivan/AP
9. But for anyone — black women included —
being locked up in jail puts you at higher risk
for suicide.
Statistics show being incarcerated is a risk factor on its own. And, perhaps surprisingly, this is far more pronounced in jails than in prisons.
Suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the United States in 2012, with 12.6 people per 100,000 dying that way, according to the CDC. The No. 1 cause was heart disease, with 170.5 deaths per 100,000.
In jail, that gap closed drastically. Suicide accounted for 31.3% of jail inmate deaths that same year, with 40 suicide deaths per 100,000 inmates, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. After death by illness of any kind, it was the second-leading cause of death in America’s jails, even outstripping heart disease (36 deaths per 100,000).
Black women are among the least likely inmates to die this way. That year, 12.7% of inmate suicide victims were women. And black people had the lowest average rate of jail suicides between 2000 and 2012, at 14 per 100,000 deaths versus 80 per 100,000 for whites.
10. Even if you’re only there for
a brief amount of time.
One of the more sobering aspects of this phenomenon is how it corresponds to time spent locked up. Jails — in which people are incarcerated for shorter periods than in prisons — see much higher suicide rates than their long-term counterparts.
And if you’re going to die in jail, it’ll probably happen early on in the process — as it did with Bland, Chapman and Jones. Out of all the deaths in jails in 2012, the largest portion — at 36.5% — happened within the first seven days of incarceration. The second biggest wave took place between eight and 30 days, with 21%.
Almost three-quarters (73%) of people who died in jail in 2012 were never convicted of a crime.
The lives of these five women can never be fully explained using a set of dispassionate statistics, facts and figures. But the ways their experiences fit into broader disparities that affect black women are telling. They prove the United States has a much bigger problem on its hands than these individual deaths.
Ex-Baltimore Cop Michael Wood Exposes
Police Culture Of Corruption & Abuse
(Interview w/ Cenk Uygur)
Former U.S. Marine and Baltimore police officer Michael A. Wood, Jr. made headlines when he Tweeted about the abuses he witnessed fellow Baltimore police officers perpetrating. In this interview with The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur Wood reveals the truth behind the “us vs. them” siege mentality pervading urban police forces that leads to a culture of corruption, racism and abuse, and what can be done to bring change for the better to policing in the United States.
Follow Michael A. Wood Jr. on Twitter: @MichaelAWoodJr
Could you imagine living your entire life not knowing your true ethnic background? Movie director Lacey Schwartz can. Watch her talk about her new film “Little White Lie” and more.
Black Lesbian poet and activist Staceyann Chin is featured in a new video from the StyleLikeU project, “a video platform and movement founded by a mother-daughter duo who are empowering people to accept and express their true selves.”
In this series, called “What’s Underneath,” “today’s cultural influencers down to their underwear as they open up about style, image, and identity,” writes Seth Oelbaum, deputy editor of the project, in a e-mail to Colorlines.
Chin, who recently began a video series with her 3-year-old daughter, Zuri, is their latest subject. Her video is engaging, lyrical, and politically onpoint. She opens up about her experience with corrective rape in her home country of Jamaica, choosing motherhood at age 39 and much more.
CODE’s 2016 Burt Award for Caribbean Literature is now open for submissions. The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2015.
In its third edition, the Award, established by Canadian education NGO CODE with the generous support of the Literary Prizes Foundation and in partnership with the Bocas Lit Fest, aims to celebrate the literary achievements of Caribbean authors while improving young readers’ access to books that are engaging and meaningful to them.
Part of a global initiative also present in four African countries and Canada, the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature is an annual Award that will be given to three English-language literary works for Young Adults (aged 12 through 18) written by Caribbean authors. A First Prize of $10,000 CAD, a Second Prize of $7,000 CAD and a Third Prize of $5,000 CAD will be awarded to the winning authors. Publishers of winning titles will be awarded a guaranteed purchase of up to 2,000 copies, which will be donated to schools, libraries and literacy organizations throughout the region so young Caribbean readers can enjoy them.
Published books, previously self-published books, and unpublished manuscripts are eligible for the Award. Eligible books and unpublished manuscripts can be submitted to the Bocas Lit Fest by publishers registered and operating in the Caribbean. Unpublished manuscripts or previously self-published books can also be submitted by authors directly to the Bocas Lit Fest.
Books published between 1 October 2013 and 31 October 2015 and eligible manuscripts must be received at the office of the Bocas Lit Fest by 31 October 2015.
Winners will be announced at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad and Tobago in the spring of 2016.