Black History Month

Ella Foskett
2 days ago
2 min read

As we celebrate Black History month this February, it is essential to acknowledge the disproportionate impact the prison system has on the black American population and its role in the maintenance of race based oppression.

This adverse impact is no accident, it is the result of years of culminated racial violence targeting black people, carried out by state institutions. Since the eradication of slavery after the Civil War, prison has been used as a tool to target black populations and enforce a racial hierarchy. During the reconstruction era following the Civil War, black codes, Jim Crow law, and vagrancy laws were used to impose criminality on black populations in order to facilitate control of their bodies in a post-slavery nation.

The 1960s Civil Rights movement facilitated the end of Jim Crow laws and the overt legal discrimination towards black people, but the language of criminality provided a continued avenue for the targeted control of black individuals.

The 1970s brought the War on Drugs and the rise of mass incarceration. The implementation of strict sentencing guidelines and the increased over-policing of black communities led to a booming prison population disproportionately filled with black men. While black men make up 13% of the general American population, they represent 35% of incarcerated individuals (Vera Institute).

This Black History Month, take time to honor the millions of black individuals who have been unjustly swept into the American criminal justice system by reading the works of incarcerated black authors, who still manage to stand up and tell their stories despite imminent threats of violence and traumatizing conditions. These productions of knowledge defy a regime trying to break their authors just by existing. Lend them power this Black History month by reading, discussing, and sharing.