What If Stop-and-Frisk Were a Biloxi, Mississippi Policy?
If Stop-and-Frisk were a Mississippi policy , we’d all be living through incessant airings of Mississippi Burning.
In the 1700s, Charleston, South Carolina was home to the largest slave port in America. It is said that one out of every six African Americans can trace his/her ancestry back to that port. The rice, tobacco, and indigo that these slaves produced made America one of richest countries in the world and simultaneously fueled the burgeoning middle class of Europe. Furthermore, the rice fields of South Carolina, carved by male and female Africans, into the landscape with no heavy machinery and no complicated schematics should be listed as the eighth wonder of the world.
While much is written about the Charleston port, almost nothing is said of the second largest port in America: New York City. As a matter of fact, slavery started in New York almost a century earlier in the early 1600s. At the time, the slave trade in New York was controlled by the Dutch and not the British. And while much is said about the colony in Jamestown, Virginia, very little is mentioned of the slaves who went on to lay the foundation for what would become New York City. For example, what was the cash crop of New York? Were New York slaves mainly urban slaves or rural ones? Or, if there was limited agricultural production, what other trades were slaves involved in? Were they truly slaves at first or indentured servants?
Historical and land records of New York do show that some slaves attained their freedom under the Dutch and secured land. Once the British took over, there was continued importation of slaves. A slave market was established at the end of Wall Street where it intersects with East Street (Go figure…Wall Street, where fortunes are won and lost in the blink of an eye, was home to a slave market).
In addition to free slaves under the Dutch, several slaves entered the colony who had been once freed by the Spanish. They were captured and resold by the British: the slaves rightfully contended that their capture and enslavement were illegal, but no record shows that they were ever manumitted. This was around 1740. What has all of this got to do with stop-and-frisk? I’m getting to it, reader. I promise. Just read along for a few more short paragraphs.
Now, back to this trek through history. In 1741, a rash of fires broke out in New York City. England had been at war with Spain for more than a year, so many people suspected a Spanish hand behind the fires. Then, for some reason, it went from a perfectly tanned, white Spanish hand to a black, enslaved hand. Black males (because males are males whether slave or free, some of these Black males were rather rowdy and deviant), began to be the prime suspects in these fires. The judge who was appointed to investigate the fires, with absolutely no evidence, declared that the slaves were busy plotting an insurrection against the white citizens of New York. Gossipers and journalists called it “The Great Negro Plot of 1741”…Only there was no plot or evidence of a plot…only the suspicion of Black males in the city. Many males were stopped and arrested for no reason at all, other than they were Black. I don’t know about you, reader, but that sounds like Stop-and-Frisk to me. See? I told you it was all related.
A bar maid and indentured servant, Mary Burton, who worked in the tavern where some of the rowdier Black males gathered, was arrested and interrogated. Under duress, she began to give up names of “suspects.” Mary Burton testified all summer long — giving names to the itching ears of the government of New York. By the end of the summer, more than 150 people were arrested and “tried” on suspicion alone, 80 people (mostly Black, but a few whites sprinkled here and there) were exiled, 30 Black people (mostly men) were executed, and four whites (including a pregnant woman) were hanged as well. The white people who were hanged were not given a proper burial, but were left to rot in the open as a example to all other whites who might be friendly to Black people.
Stop-and-frisk is a New York policy. It was born in New York during a time of paranoia and also enslavement. Yet, New York City went on to garner an undeserved reputation of “liberal” and openness. The media covers it as so. How do we know? Some 260 years later, Michael Bloomberg re-instituted the policy with little push-back from the media. Once again, just like 262 years ago, the police stopped mainly young men in the city. And once again, just like 262 years ago, the men were mainly Black with Latino men trailing a close second and some whites sprinkled here and there. I hate to keep saying it, but once again, the policy didn’t turn up much. But Bloomberg, just like his counterparts from 262 years ago, insisted that the policy was working. Even when a court struck it down, he stood by it.
For those very factual historical reasons, I do not “buy” Bloomberg’s apology. I am also angry at the media for how they covered the 21st century remix of a 1741 policy that legalized, sanctioned, and executed a race-based police state in New York City. As a Mississippian, I often sit and wonder, “What if Stop-and-Frisk were a Biloxi, Mississippi policy?” Reader, couldn’t you just see the footage of a Delta Mississippi with its cotton fields in bloom? Wouldn’t we all have to endure constant re-airings of Mississippi Burning? Wouldn’t CNN have no shortage of stories from the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi linking Biloxi Stop-and-Frisk to nightmarish days gone by? Even if this policy were a Biloxi policy, it would somehow become a Delta policy (because, according to Hollywood, all of Mississippi is one big cotton field with no indoor plumbing and no paved highways and no tv-lookety-boxes and no computer doo-hickies with that new information super highway)and we’d somehow collectively be sucked back to sweltering Freedom Summer and forced to endure Hollywood accents and up North media personalities complaining about the heat and the mosquitoes while they flippantly remind us that Mississippi is last in all things good.
I do not buy Michael Bloomberg’s apology. Equally guilty is the American media class for how it continues to soft-pedal racial and class problems in “liberal” New York while over-covering some geographical areas. Covering the South for racism is safe. It always has been. In another post, I will talk about how many racial incidents above the Mason-Dixon line were quieted and how that hindered the Civil Rights Movement.
But, back to the post at hand. Being a Mississippian, I am biased. It doesn’t have to be Mississippi. Open your imaginations with me, reader. If Stop-and-Frisk were in Birmingham, Alabama, you know and I know that it would not have taken long for public sentiment to turn against the policy, because the history of Alabama and Bloody Sunday would be replayed repeatedly on television. As a matter of fact, the most vociferous critics of Stop-and-Frisk seemed to have been media personalities of color, and even they were countered as whiners playing the race card rather than people concerned about crime.
There is much written about slavery in America’s second largest slave port, New York City. If you would like to know more about the witch-hunt/stop-and-frisk policy of 1741, please read more about it here: https://www.britannica.com/event/New-York-slave-rebellion-of-1741
If you like this post, clapback (press the hands to the left). If you don’t, leave me an angry response. This is not from my class, but from my diary as a professor who loves African American Studies.
