thenation | This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be
heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so
obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less
my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in
which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his
self-respect.
* * *
On April 17, some school children overturned a fruit stand in Harlem.
This would have been a mere childish prank if the children had been
white—had been, that is, the children of that portion of the citizenry
for whom the police work and who have the power to control the police.
But these children were black, and the police chased them and beat them
and took out their guns; and Frank Stafford lost his eye in exactly the
same way The Harlem Six lost their liberty—by trying to protect the
younger children. Daniel Hamm, for example, tells us that “…we heard
children scream. We turned around and walked back to see what happened. I
saw this policeman with his gun out and with his billy in his hand I
like put myself in the way to keep him from shooting the kids. Because
first of all he was shaking like a leaf and jumping all over the place.
And I thought he might shoot one of them.”
He was arrested, along with Wallace Baker, carried to the police
station, beaten—“six and twelve at a time would beat us. They got so
tired beating us they just came in and started spitting on us—they even
bring phlegm up and spit on me.” This went on all day in the evening.
Wallace Baker and Daniel Hamm were taken to Harlem Hospital for X rays
and then carried back to the police station, where the beating continued
all night. They were eventually released, with the fruit-stand charges
pending, in spite of the testimony of the fruit-stand owner. This
fruit-stand owner had already told the police that neither Wallace Baker
nor Daniel Hamm had ever been at his store and that they certainly had
had nothing to do with the fruit-stand incident. But this had no effect
on the conduct of the police. The boys had already attracted the
attention of the police, long before the fruit-stand riot, and in a
perfectly innocent way. They are pigeon fanciers and they
keep—kept—pigeons on the roof. But the police are afraid of everything
in Harlem and they are especially afraid of the roofs, which they
consider to be guerrilla outposts. This means that the citizens of
Harlem who, as we have seen, can come to grief at any hour in the
streets, and who are not safe at their windows, are forbidden the very
air. They are safe only in their houses—or were, until the city passed
the No Knock, Stop and Frisk laws, which permit a policeman to enter
one’s home without knocking and to stop anyone on the streets, at will,
at any hour, and search him. Harlem believes, and I certainly agree,
that these laws are directed against Negroes. They are certainly not
directed against anybody else. One day, “two carloads of detectives come
and went up on the roof. They pulled their guns on the kids and
searched them and made them all come down and they were going to take
them down to the precinct.” But the boys put up a verbal fight and
refused to go and attracted quite a crowd. “To get these boys to the
precinct we would have to shoot them,” a policeman said, and “the police
seemed like they was embarrassed. Because I don’t think they expected
the kids to have as much sense as they had in speaking up for
themselves.” They refused to go to the precinct, “and they didn’t,’’ and
their exhibition of the spirit of ’76 marked them as dangerous.
Occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in
that New World which the Europeans conquered, and it is axiomatic, in
occupied territory, that any act of resistance, even though it be
executed by a child, be answered at once, and with the full weight of
the occupying forces. Furthermore, since the police, not at all
surprisingly, are abysmally incompetent—for neither, in fact, do they
have any respect for the law, which is not surprising, either—Harlem and
all of New York City is full of unsolved crimes. A crime, as we know,
is solved when someone is arrested and convicted. It is not
indispensable, but it is useful, to have a confession. If one is carried
back and forth from the precinct to the hospital long enough, one is
likely to confess to anything.
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