Law enforcement itself led mobs that brutalized Black families and then charged the victims

Evidence

Days later, when the Black man and four of his children went into town, a marshal served him a warrant for trespassing. When the man asked what he’d done, the marshal replied that “he would rather kill the negro than read the warrant.” The marshal then attacked the man, pistol-whipping him to the ground. A group of white men jumped in and began to choke and beat him. As his daughters rushed to help their father, a man kicked one of them in the gut. The family was overpowered by the mob and dragged to jail. The man and one of his daughters were badly injured. Three of the man’s daughters were charged with resisting arrest, and his son was charged with carrying a pistol, despite the fact that he did not have one. The next day in jail the family learned that their neighbor had told the police that the Black man had been trespassing on his property. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 907

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the extractive, state-sanctioned violence central to the chapter; a concrete instance of the legal order weaponizing itself against victims.