Let’s build our power as well as protest

Did you know that the original mandate of the Police in the Southern United States in the late 1800s was to protect the rights of slave masters and plantation owners? In the History of Policing in America; Dr. Gary Potter explains that the first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 for three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers if they violated any plantation rules. “Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved into the modern Police force.” Their duties later evolved in Boston and other industrial areas as protection for the factory owners and Industrialists, the most powerful in society.

Throughout history, the more powerful races have been mostly concerned deterrence of the black race and retaining the economic, political, and military powers. Deterrence is the action of discouraging or instilling doubt or fear of the consequences. Actions are; being beaten, being blatantly shot, public death from excessive force. The consequence are: death, imprisonment, and most importantly, for blacks to remain socioeconomically poor.

So you wonder and want to ask, what was the purpose of the treatment in slavery and Jim Crow Laws post-slavery? Deterrence…