- Tacoma Community College Library
- Tacoma Community College Library
- African American History
- Black Lives Matter & Mass Incarceration
African American History
Black Lives Matter, Police Violence & Mass Incarceration
What is the Black Lives Matter Movement?
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an African-American movement that campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward black people. It held many protests against police killings of black people and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and perceived racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system. The movement became nationally recognized for its street demonstrations following the 2014 deaths of two African Americans: Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.
(click on image to enlarge, cited below)
- From the article “Black Lives Matter” Protests Mistreatment of African Americans by the Police, cited below
Featured Websites & Collections
Linked below are websites, online exhibits, and other digital collections with resources on topics related to African American history in the United States.
- 50 Years and a Wake Up: Ending The Mass Incarceration Crisis In AmericaFrom the Sentencing Project: "The campaign raises awareness about the dire state of the U.S. criminal legal system, the devastating impact of incarceration on communities and families, and proposes more effective crime prevention strategies for our country."
- ACLU: Mass Incarceration"The ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country."
- ACLU: Police Excessive ForcePart of the Criminal Justice Law Reform Project, find info on Police Excessive Force, Police Corruption, Asset Forfeiture Abuse, Police Militarization, Search and Seizure, and more
- Amnesty International: Police ViolenceFind information and statistics, images and articles - and more, from this collection from Amnesty International
- Black Lives MatterBlack Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
- The Black Struggle for Freedom The Major Events and Timeline of the Civil Rights Movement in AmericaA collection of articles, images, videos and other linked resources covering the following topics: The Black Freedom Struggle | Slave Revolts, Abolition, and the Underground Railroad | Reconstruction | Early 20th Century | The Southern Civil Rights Movement |Politics and Race in Late 20th Century | Resisting Racism in Policing and the Justice System
- Campaign ZeroCampaign Zero is a project of the non-profit
that...supports "the analysis of policing practices across the country, research to identify effective solutions to end police violence, technical assistance to organizers leading police accountability campaigns and the development of model legislation and advocacy to end police violence nationwide" - Center for Policing Equity"The Center for Policing Equity is a research center founded at University of California-Los Angeles and now based at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice."
- Confronting the Whiteness in Black Girls’ CriminalizationA 2021 article from the Activist History Review
- Department of Justice: Law EnforcementCommunity Relations Services "works toward its mission by providing facilitated dialogue, mediation, training, and consultation to assist these communities to come together, develop solutions to the conflict, and enhance their capacity to independently prevent and resolve future conflict."
- EJI: Criminal Justice ReformA collection of articles and info about topics related to mass incarceration, prison reform, and more, from the Equal Rights Initiative
- Equal Justice Initiative"The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society."
- Law Enforcement Accountability Project"The goal of LEAP is to elevate activist storytelling around police brutality and murder through funding short-term projects in film, theater, photography, fine art, music, poetry, literature, sculpture and dance. Change begins with the stories we tell each other about the police and Black people."
- The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration"The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is situated on a site in Montgomery where Black people were forced to labor in bondage. Blocks from one of the most prominent slave auction spaces in America, the Legacy Museum is steps away from the rail station where tens of thousands of Black people were trafficked during the 19th century. "
- Mapping Police Violence"This information has been meticulously sourced from the three largest, most comprehensive and impartial crowdsourced databases on police killings in the country: FatalEncounters.org, the U.S. Police Shootings Database and KilledbyPolice.net. We've also done extensive original research to further improve the quality and completeness of the data; searching social media, obituaries, criminal records databases, police reports and other sources to identify the race of 90 percent of all victims in the database."
- Mapping Race in AmericaAnd interactive map from the Othering & Belonging Institute. "Use this map to observe the level and change in racial residential segregation across the United States."
- The Marshall ProjectThe Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We achieve this through award-winning journalism, partnerships with other news outlets and public forums. In all of our work we strive to educate and enlarge the audience of people who care about the state of criminal justice.
- National Law Enforcement Museum: Black Trailblazers in BlueA collection of posts from the National Law Enforcement Museum
- The Sentencing Project"Mission: The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by producing groundbreaking research to promote reforms in sentencing policy, address unjust racial disparities and practices, and to advocate for alternatives to incarceration."
- Stop Police Brutality Now"The purpose of our STOP Police Brutality Now initiative is to gather reports of credible allegations of police misconduct so policymakers (and others) can make informed assessments regarding the nature and circumstances of police misconduct, and consider proposals that can minimize wrongdoing."
Featured Videos
Linked below are videos both freely online through websites like YouTube or TED, as well as from the library's collection in such databases as Kanopy, Films on Demand, or Academic Video Online. Click or hover your cursor over the icon to learn more about each item.
- The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, Episode 5, Rise!: 1940-1968Streaming on Alexander Street
- Black Lives Matter, A Year After FergusonA video from AJ+, "Michael Brown was killed a year ago, yet the bodies continue to pile up. Professor John A. Powell says we need more than just a conversation."
- TED Talks: White Supremacy - Same Dog, Same Tricks-Time to Change the TrainingA talk by Russell Ellis at TEDxSUNYGeneseo
- Why is white supremacy growing in the United States?A video from The Bottom Line from Al Jazeera English, ~25 minutes
Featured Podcasts
Linked here are full podcasts or podcast episodes, as well as short audio recordings from news programs such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the like.
- Beyond Prisons [Podcast]"Beyond Prisons is a podcast that explores incarceration from an abolitionist perspective. We amplify the voices of people directly impacted by the system and seek to tell stories that push us to imagine and work toward a world without prisons. "
- Black Light Mass Incarceration Show [podcast]A podcast series looking to feature the voices of the incarcerated and their families.
- Can we have a future without police? [Podcast]An episode, #27, from the podcast "Who Belongs?" with Professor Erin Kerrison
- Criminalizing Blackness: Prisons, Police and Jim CrowAn episode of the Podcast Teaching Hard History
- Dreams of Black Wall Street [Podcast]"A podcast that takes a deep dive exploration into a period in history of great promise and great disappointment for Black Americans who dreamed of and struggled for the promise of community and full citizenship in America."
- Ear Hustle [Podcast]"The daily realities of life inside prison shared by those living it, and stories from the outside, post-incarceration"
- Fair Fight Initiative Podcast"Each episode we’ll speak to reformers, informers, and survivors of our broken system of justice in the United States, and hear how the Fair Fight Initiative is crowdsourcing justice for its victims. We’ll get updates on how to make change in the system in your community. And leave you with the infinite hope that we can end mass incarceration for future generations. "
- Race & Incarceration [podcast]An episode of the podcast "If Not Now, When? Racism: a 400-year Public Health Emergency" from the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health
- Unreformed: the Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children [Podcast]A podcast looking at a state-run reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama.
Sources used on this page:
"Black Lives Matter Flag - Minneapolis MayDay Parade 2017" by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Black Lives Matter” Protests Mistreatment of African Americans by the Police: July 13, 2013–2016, ongoing. (2017). In T. T. Lewis (Ed.), Great Events from History. The 21st Century: 2000-2016 (Vol. 3, pp. 755-759). Salem Press/Grey House. https://link-gale-com.tacomacc.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/CX6074700341/GVRL?u=tacoma_comm&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=fe734a68
Featured Books & eBooks
Use the arrows to scroll through titles; click on the titles for more info and/or access
Black and Blue: Inside the Divide Between the Police and Black America
Main Collection HV8141.P34 2017
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Main Collection HV9950.A437 2012
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