[Content Note: Police brutality; racism.]
"It is not stretching things too far to find a connection between these matters and the treatment of the controversy concerning the role of the Los Angeles police. The report goes into this question at great length, finally giving no credence to the charge that the police may have contributed to the spread of the riots through the use of excessive force. Yet this conclusion is arrived at not from the point of view of the Watts Negroes, but from that of the city officials and the police. Thus, the report informs us, in judicial hearings that were held on 32 of the 35 deaths which occurred, 26 were ruled justifiable homicides, but the report—which includes such details as the precise time Mayor Yorty called Police Chief Parker and when exactly the National Guard was summoned—never tells us what a 'justifiable homicide' is considered to be."—Bayard Rustin, in "The Watts," an essay written in 1966 on the Watts Riots of 1965.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing. It is a long read, but it is so important. Read it and think about what is happening in Ferguson, about the National Guard being "summoned," about the recent report on school segregation, about the very things that are being said about black communities right now, in order to justify the killing of Michael Brown.
1966.
Forty-eight years ago, that was written.
[My thanks to shani for passing it along.]
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