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“Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but out life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun in Reconstruction” (Ellison 16).

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Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale (left) and defense minister Huey P. Newton.

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Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale (left) and defense minister Huey P. Newton.

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“You must realize immediately that much of our work is opposed. Our discipline demands therefore that we talk to no one and that we avoid situations in which information might be given away unwittingly. So you must put aside your past.”

Brother Jack is preparing the narrator to become part of an organization and describing to him how to be a part of a collective movement and collective conscious. And while this is beneficial in the means of a movement, the narrator has a lost identity and already is jumbled up as an individual (in reference to his recent electric shock therapy). The narrator is invisible to the world around him so how could he make any difference? This directs the audience to draw a conclusion that has everything to do with social and political movements, no matter the nature of them. That collectivism is something more profound than individuality and is more powerful in the eyes of radical widespread change and progress. But our narrator, whom is already lost, becomes a little more lost within the inner hierarchical works of the organizations. This symbolizes that while collective movements can bring power to individualism by bring people together for a certain goal, it can also make things all the more messy left there be hypocrisy and corruption.
#VivaLaRevolution!

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Black Panther Party demonstration at State Capitol, Sacramento, California, May 2nd, 1967 (Flickr)

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Black Panther Party demonstration at State Capitol, Sacramento, California, May 2nd, 1967 (Flickr)

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#PolicingThePolice

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“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.” (Ellison 573)

Ellison’s character explains that he has always conformed to others beliefs because they do not see his beliefs as they are either way, but now he has learned that he can live truly because people refuse to see him as he is either way — he can weaponize his invisibility for the better. His rebellion is a show of solidarity, not only with his own selfhood, but with his communities’. While it is more work to be true to oneself and invisible, it strengthens his and his communities’ world in the face of the struggle for just world.

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In Invisible Man a African American is killed by a police officer in Harlem.  This sparks a riot in Harlem that involves looting, people being killed, and all out chaos.  Much like the BLM riots following George Floyd’s death.
“The street lay dead quiet in the light of the lately risen moon, the gunfire thin and for a moment, distant.  The rioting seemed in another world” (Ellison 553).

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Just like in Invisible Man the narrator has numerous challenges he has to get through in order to survive.
“I never told you, but our life is a war, and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction.  Live with your head in the lion’s mouth.  I want you to overcome ‘‘em with yeses, undermine ‘‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swollen you till they vomit or bust wide open” (Ellison 16).  Much like the African American population in America today they feel like their life is a war, but they won’t stop fighting until they can get even rights.

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On May 25, 2020 a 46 year old Black man named George Floyd tried to by cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.  Police were called and seventeen minutes after they arrived George Floyd was on the ground, pinned beneath three police officers showing no signs of life.  The city of Minneapolis and the country were angry and confused as to how a person could’ve died in police custody, in America.  All four officers were quickly fired and charged with 2nd degree murder as well as assisting a homicide, but that wasn’t enough for the people of Minneapolis.  Riots broke out the next day all over the country and many turned hostile as rioters destroyed businesses as well as police cars.  Police had to break many up.  This event was what grew the Black Lives Matter movement into what it is today.

Here is a video that shows what happened during Floyd’s arrest
https://youtu.be/kiSm0Nuqomg

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Many people would have forgotten about the BLM movement after a few months if it wasn’t for twitter. After the death of George Floyd people took to twitter to voice their concerns.  With the #Black Lives Matter being used almost 2 million times it can be seen why the movement got as big as it did.  Social media helped spread awareness to this issue in 2020.

Most popular hashtags:
#Black Lives Matter
#George Floyd
#Black
#I Can’t Breathe

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#UnderstandingIntersectionality

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Angela Davis (BPP Member) on Violence and Revolution 

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Angela Davis (BPP Member) on Violence and Revolution 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnDONDvJVE&scrlybrkr=fef1abf2

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A first hand POV of how systemic oppression has affected the African American society, even in art.

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Racism is Embedded in the American System

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Racism is Embedded in the American System

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“Instead, Black and white Americans will chase the elusive American Dream while bemoaning the fact that it is not working for them. The reality is this — unless we redefine the American Dream inclusively, creating the means to enable true economic freedom — not just aspirational opportunity, but the means to achieve it — we will not live up to the ideal, the promise, or the possibility of America” (Enobog and Hanley).

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“The Black and white educated, middle-aged workers, whose stories we tell in our book express common ground on the ideal of a meritocratic America in which the individual who deserves security is the person who works for it. Yet, in their accounts, the fairness of the system itself and the feasibility of the Dream are unquestioned” (Stone Center).

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"A hateful person came to this community with some crazy idea he'd be able to divide, but all he did was unite us and make us love each other even more," Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said as he described plans for an evening vigil at a sports arena near the church. (Associated Press)

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9 African American’s were murdered at a bible study, due to the shooter’s desire to “save the white race since blacks were taking over the world” (Stone Center).

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Black Feminism in ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’, Interviews by Angela Davis and Frank Barat

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Black Feminism in ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’, Interviews by Angela Davis and Frank Barat

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“Black feminism emerged as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social world we inhabit. At the time of its emergence, Black women were frequently asked to choose whether the Black movement or the women’s movement was most important” (Davis 4).
“The more appropriate question was how to understand the intersection and interconnections between the two movements. We are still faced with the challenge of understanding the complex ways race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, and ability are intertwined—but also how we move beyond these categories to under the interrelationships of ideas and processes that seem to be separate and unrelated” (Davis 4).

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Collectivism in ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’, Interviews by Angela Davis and Frank Barat

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Collectivism in ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle’, Interviews by Angela Davis and Frank Barat

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“Since, the rise of global capitalism and related ideologies associated with neoliberalism, it has become especially important to identity the dangers of individualism. Progressive struggles—wether they are focused on racism, repression, poverty, or other issues—are doomed to fail if they do not also attempt to develop a consciousness of the insidious promotion of capitalist individualism. Even as Nelson Mandela always insisted that his accomplishments were collective, always also achieved by the men and women who were his comrades, the media attempted to sanctify him as a heroic individual” (Davis 1).
“It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals in order for people today to recognize their potential agency as a part of an ever-expanding community of struggle” (Davis 2).
#Solidarity4Ever

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Ideologies, Motives, and Conduct of the NAACP

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Ideologies, Motives, and Conduct of the NAACP

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The NAACP was strongly motivated by the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments and fought hard, long, and peaceful hours to advocate that their civil rights be upheld. Many are tactics we use today like marches, peaceful gatherings, waving signs, singing, and so on. One of the means to organize these civil disobedience demonstrations was through The Crisis Newspaper. The NAACP was ideologically more aligned with democratic values rather than anything further left than socialism, and were seen as more patriotic in nature due to this alignment.
#Democracy4All  #YesEvenHereRonaldReagan

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Created in 1966, Oakland CA, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was organized by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who were students of Merritt College. Ideologically, the BPP advocated for Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense. The revolutionary organization was a core group in the Black Power Movement which contrasted with nonviolent and reformist protest movements. One of the differing stances the BPP’s took from organizations like the NAACP was namely their armed self-defense strategies. The BPP took any approach to “police the police” as an act to prevent police brutality. Although at the time the BPP was painted as a terrorist organization due to their self-advocacy and stance against institutionalized racism and brutality until the release of the FBI’s declassified documents were released on the subject decades later. The FBI had assassinated many Black Panthers, for example Fred Hampton, in the name of “national security”.
#AKAWhiteSupremacy

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#RacismIsReal

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how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.

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how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.

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how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.
— ⚥ mother moses moon ☽☾ (@thotscholar) April 15, 2023

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how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.

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how are you advocating that children not be educated about racial ideology when it directly affects them and theirs while simultaneously affirming that racism will never die? the concept of children's innocence was built using racism and socioeconomic prejudice.

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More than half of UK’s black children live in poverty, analysis shows

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Exclusive: Labour party research also finds black children at least twice as likely to grow up poor as white children

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"I don't know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers" (Ellison 459).

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On August 9, 2014 Micheal Brown a young African American man was killed by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri.  He was wanted for stealing cigars from a gas station.  “After Wilson stopped, he and Brown struggled through the window of the police sport-utility vehicle.  Wilson’s gun went off twice.  Brown ran away, and Wilson exited the car and pursued Brown on foot.  Brown turned and faced Wilson.  The officer fired his gun, hitting Brown multiple times and killing him” (Edwards and Harris 7-8).
Brown’s body was left in the road for 4 hours after his death.  A crowd grew around his body and the community members began to get mad.  “People who saw Brown lying in the street for several hours felt the police were sending a message: this could be you” (Edwards and Harris 11).

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On June 3 2020 thousands of people took part in a Black Lives Matter rally in Boston Massachusites.  Photo taken by Nicolaus Czarnecki.

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50,000 people marched through the streets of Philadelphia on June 5, 2020.  Photo taken by Shawn Kornhauser.

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https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01394

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White-Black differences in survival remain wide notwithstanding public health efforts to improve life expectancy and initiatives to reduce health disparities” (Mary Bowen).

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White-Black differences in survival remain wide notwithstanding public health efforts to improve life expectancy and initiatives to reduce health disparities” (Mary Bowen).

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Segregation Protest. Marchers protest segregated education at the college and secondary levels, Houston, Texas, 1947. Photograph by J. H. Lawson.

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Segregation Protest. Marchers protest segregated education at the college and secondary levels, Houston, Texas, 1947. Photograph by J. H. Lawson.

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Racial residential segregation, socioeconomic disparities, and the White-Black survival gap

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In a contemporary national sample of Black and White individuals living in major US CBSAs, it was found that Blacks had a lower probability of survival from age 35 to 75 than their White counterparts.

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PLoS One. 2018; 13(2): e0193222.

Ioana Popescu, Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, 1,* Erin Duffy, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Visualization, ² Joshua Mendelsohn, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Visualization, ² and José J. Escarce, Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing ¹

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the association between racial residential segregation, a prominent manifestation of systemic racism, and the White-Black survival gap in a contemporary cohort of adults, and to assess the extent to which socioeconomic inequality explains this association.

Design

This was a cross sectional study of White and Black men and women aged 35-75 living in 102 large US Core Based Statistical Areas. The main outcome was the White-Black survival gap. We used 2009-2013 CDC mortality data for Black and White men and women to calculate age-, sex- and race adjusted White and Black mortality rates. We measured segregation using the Dissimilarity index, obtained from the Manhattan Institute. We used the 2009-2013 American Community Survey to define indicators of socioeconomic inequality. We estimated the CBSA-level White-Black gap in probability of survival using sequential linear regression models accounting for the CBSA dissimilarity index and race-specific socioeconomic indicators.

Results

Black men and women had a 14% and 9% lower probability of survival from age 35 to 75 than their white counterparts. Residential segregation was strongly associated with the survival gap, and this relationship was partly, but not fully, explained by socioeconomic inequality. At the lowest observed level of segregation, and with the Black socioeconomic status (SES) assumed to be at the White SES level scenario, the survival gap is essentially eliminated.

Conclusion

White-Black differences in survival remain wide notwithstanding public health efforts to improve life expectancy and initiatives to reduce health disparities. Eliminating racial residential segregation and bringing Black socioeconomic status (SES) to White SES levels would eliminate the White-Black survival gap.

Introduction

Despite substantial improvements in US life expectancy, White-Black disparities in survival remain wide.[ 1- 4] The pathways underlying these disparities are not fully understood, but social determinants of health are deemed to play a primary role.[ 5- 8] Low socioeconomic status (SES), which is more prevalent among black populations, is linked to a broad range of adverse health outcomes including higher burden of chronic disease,[ 9] worse self-reported health status,[ 10] and higher mortality rates.[ 11] Many factors have been invoked to explain SES disparities, but systemic racism and its prominent manifestation, racial residential segregation, are considered key in the perpetuation of White-Black inequality.[ 12]

Residential segregation refers to the spatial separation of population groups along racial or ethnic lines. Patterns of residential segregation have been historically shaped by systemic interpersonal and institutional racism. Prior to the 1960s, racial residential segregation was both legal and ubiquitous in the United States, enforced by social and public policies such as the Jim Crow laws in the South and the Federal Housing Administration's early lending (red-lining) policies.[ 13] With the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) in 1968 segregation officially ended. Nonetheless, de facto segregation persists through a variety of political and social mechanisms.[ 14] As a consequence, Blacks currently live under a level of segregation higher than that of any other racial/ ethnic group.[ 15]

The theoretical framework for the current study is based on the concept that social factors are fundamental causes of inequalities in health.[ 6] Because of its pervasive effects on everyday life and on the social and built environment, racial residential segregation (henceforth segregation) is widely seen as a primary cause of racial disparities in health and survival.[ 5, 16- 18] Segregation affects health through multiple pathways. First, segregation shapes racial differences in SES. Black neighborhoods in highly segregated metropolitan areas tend to have limited access to educational and labor market opportunities, which contribute to racial income inequality, high levels of unemployment and concentrated poverty.[ 5, 8, 19] Second, segregation influences health through its negative effects on neighborhood conditions, including crowded housing, poor housing quality, and lack of amenities such as recreational facilities and establishments offering healthy food choices.[ 5, 16] Black neighborhoods in highly segregated metropolitan areas may receive fewer and lower quality services from local municipalities and the pervasive disadvantages may contribute to social disorganization and family disruption, diminished trust among members, and increased crime.[ 5] Lastly, segregation has negative effects on health care delivery for black individuals, including lower rates of health insurance (often tied to lower employment rates), and diminished access to high quality providers and treatments.[ 20, 21] The pathways through which racial residential segregation and other forms of systemic racism lead to, and ultimately to health inequalities are summarized in Fig 1 .

The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationship between racial residential segregation and the White-Black gap in survival, and the extent to which socioeconomic inequality explains this relationship. Our study contributes to the field in several ways. We employed contemporary Census data to ensure that our findings reflect the current state of segregation and survival disparities; we used race-specific socioeconomic indicators to account for the fact that the racial gap in SES may differ across CBSAs; and we estimated separate models for men and women (to assess whether effect size differs by gender). Additionally, the study outcome was the gap in the probability of survival from age 35 to 75. This metric is intuitively easy to understand and complements earlier findings using mortality rates. Lastly, we used the results of our analyses to predict how large the survival gap would be if segregation were eliminated and the socioeconomic status of Blacks could be brought to the level of White socioeconomic status.

Given the rising White-Black income gap during and after the recent recession,[ 22] and the persistent high levels of White-Black residential segregation, understanding how these factors interplay in the current historical and socioeconomic context and how they influence health is of particular public and health policy interest.

Methods

Data sources

The primary data source for the study was the compressed mortality file for 2009-2013, obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiological Research (WONDER) system, a publicly available database.[ 23] CDC WONDER provides county-level, race- and gender-specific data on death and population counts by 5- and 10-year age groups. We aggregated these data at the Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) level. CBSAs collectively represent both metropolitan and micropolitan areas in the United States. We used CDC WONDER data to create our study cohorts and to compute age/gender/race specific mortality rates. We obtained a CBSA-level measure of segregation Manhattan Institute,[ 24] and measures of SES from the American Community Survey for 2009-2013.

Study sample

The study sample consisted of Black and non-Hispanic White (henceforth White) men and women aged 35-75 captured in the CDC WONDER database, aggregated at the CBSA level. To protect against the potential disclosure of personal health information, CDC WONDER suppresses data for any gender/race/age group with fewer than 10 deaths in a county. Thus, we imputed death counts for gender/race/age groups with missing data using a previously published algorithm that pools mortality rates for corresponding groups from other counties within a larger metro area to estimate the missing counts.[ 25]

We restricted our study sample to 102 CBSAs that met two criteria: total Black population >40,000 and imputation of deaths required for less than 10% of the Black population. Across these CBSAs, we only needed to impute deaths for 2.9% of the Black population. Moreover, because the groups that were missing mortality data were young and had low death rates, we estimate that we only imputed 0.5% of deaths. To evaluate the robustness of our results, we performed sensitivity analyses using CBSAs where imputation of deaths was required for less than 5% (N = 67) and for less than 15% (N = 121) of the Black population.

Study variables

The outcome variable for this study was the White-Black gap in the probability of survival from age 35 to 75, computed for the entire sample and separately for men and women, using standard life table techniques.[ 26] Death and population counts were aggregated at the CBSA level. We elected to measure mortality beginning at age 35 to reduce the impact of violent causes of death, which are more prevalent among younger individuals, and enable the outcome to capture mainly the chronic effects of segregation and SES on death due to illnesses.[ 27] (According to CDC data, the percentage of deaths due to unintentional injuries/homicide/suicide out of all deaths in the 35-74 age group is 11% for white men, 8% for black men, 7% for white women and 4% for black women.)

The key independent variable for the study was racial residential segregation. We measured racial residential segregation at the CBSA level using the White-Black dissimilarity index, which has been widely employed in studies of segregation and health. The dissimilarity index, which ranges from 0 to 1, is a measure of evenness and assesses the degree to which the proportions of minority and majority group members within individual census tracts are similar to the proportions in the CBSA. We selected dissimilarity, a measure of evenness, to quantify the degree of residential segregation at the CBSA level because we believe it is conceptually the most appropriate for our study. Evenness refers to the differential distribution of black and white individuals across census tracts within the CBSAs, that is, to their spatial separation. High levels of dissimilarity signify that blacks and whites have little common area of residence within the CBSA, and, the more spatially separated blacks and whites are within a CBSA, the more likely they are to lead separate lives in neighborhoods increasingly different in quality and in access to influence and resources. In keeping with the study framework ( Fig 1 ), racial residential segregation, as measured by dissimilarity, affects health outcomes through racial differences in socioeconomic conditions, neighborhood quality, and access to health care.

Other explanatory variables included the proportion of black individuals in each CBSA and measures of SES. We measured SES using five variables from the 2009-2013 ACS, obtained separately for Black and White men and women: median household income, percent population below the poverty line, percent population aged 25 or older with less than a high school diploma, percent males aged 16 or older who are unemployed, and percent households with children who have a female head-of-household. All the selected component variables have been previously included in published SES indices.[ 28- 31] Four variables are common measures of SES (income, poverty, education and employment); a fifth variable, the percent of households with children headed by women, was included as a measure of social disorganization and family disruption,[ 32, 33] which represent another potential pathway for segregation effects on health. For each CBSA we computed a race-specific SES index following a previously published method.[ 28] First, we standardized each individual variable in each CBSA, using the race-specific mean and standard deviation across CBSAs to calculate z-scores for each CBSA. We then added the z-scores for the five variables to create the race- and gender-specific SES index. Cronbach's alpha (a measure of internal consistency) was 0.78 for the White SES index and 0.81 for the Black SES index.

Statistical analysis

We used linear regression models to evaluate the association between segregation and the racial gap in the probability of survival from age 35 to 75 for the Black and White population overall and for men and women separately. We estimated the following model:

Y w−b,c = α + β D c + γ P c + θ w X w,c + θ b X b,c

where Y w−b,c is the White-Black gap in the probability of survival from age 35 to 75 in CBSA c; D c is the dissimilarity index in CBSA c; P c is the percent of the population black in CBSA c; X r,c ( r = w, b) represents the SES measure (i.e., income and SES index, in the respective models) for whites and blacks in CBSA c; and the Greek letters are regression coefficients to be estimated. Of note, β represents the change in the White-Black survival gap for an increase of one unit in the dissimilarity index.

We estimated three sequential regression models to elucidate the association between survival and segregation and the degree to which this association was explained by socioeconomic factors. Thus in Model 1, the base model, the explanatory variables were segregation (the dissimilarity index) and the proportion of black residents in the CBSA, which is considered an important control variable that should be included in analyses of the association between segregation and health status.[ 27] In Model 2 we added the race-specific median household income in the CBSA. Finally, in Model 3 we replaced median household income with the race-specific SES index in the CBSA (described earlier), a broader and more comprehensive measure of socioeconomic status. We used the sandwich estimator to correct the standard errors of the regression coefficients for heteroskedascity.

To make the regression results easier to interpret, we used the estimated coefficients from each model to predict the White-Black gap in the probability of survival from age 35 to 75 for CBSAs with the lowest (0.23) and highest (0.78) observed dissimilarity indexes. The percent of the black population was set to its mean and the race-specific socioeconomic characteristics were set to the means for the White population in the simulations, which has the effect of bringing the socioeconomic status of Blacks up to the level of Whites in the predictions. Our intent was to isolate the effect of segregation on the survival gap equalizing the socioeconomic status of Blacks and Whites.

Results

Descriptive data

Black men and women in the 102 study CBSAs were less likely than their White counterparts to survive from age 35 to 75 ( Table 1 ). White women were the most likely to survive to 75 years (75%), followed by Black women (66%), White men (63%), and Black men (49%). The survival gap was 14% for men and 9% for women. Across all CBSAs, measures of socioeconomic status were significantly worse for Blacks as compared to Whites ( Table 1 ). The mean dissimilarity index for the study CBSAs was 0.51 (SD, 0.12), and the mean proportion of black residents was 20% (SD, 12%).

Table 1

White population
Mean (SD)

Black population
Mean (SD)

Survival

Socioeconomic characteristics

As shown in the scatterplots in Fig 2 , the association between the probability of survival from age 35 to 75 and racial residential segregation differed strikingly across the two racial groups. Specifically, whereas the probability of survival was uncorrelated with the dissimilarity index for White men and women, survival was negatively associated with the measure of segregation, dissimilarity, for Black men and women (r = -0.32, p < .01 and r = -0.27, p < .01, respectively). Similarly, the association between median household income and segregation, and between the SES index and segregation ( Fig 3 ) differed by race. Thus, whereas median household income and SES index were uncorrelated with the dissimilarity index for Whites, Black median household income and SES index were negatively correlated with dissimilarity (r = -0.27, P < .01, and r = -0.34, p < .001 respectively). By contrast, the association between the probability of survival from age 35 to 75 and median household income or SES index was similar for Whites and Blacks (Figs ​(Figs4 4 and ​and5), 5 ), with both races (and both genders) having higher survival in CBSAs where they had higher median household income and SES index.

The findings in Figs ​Figs2 2 - 5 indicate that the White-Black survival gap is greater in more segregated than in less segregated CBSAs and suggest that a portion of this association may be explained by the association between the White-Black difference in median household income (or SES index) and segregation. Our regression analyses shed light on this question.

Regression results

Table 2 presents the results from Models 1-3, described earlier, that assessed the association between the White-Black survival gap and segregation and sequentially adjusted for the proportion of Blacks in the CBSA, median household income, and the SES index.

Table 2

White-Black Survival Gap

Overall

Men

Women

Point estimate

95% CI

Point estimate

95% CI

Point estimate

95% CI

Model 1†

Change in Black-White survival gap for a change in D from 0.23 to 0.78

8.4%***

11.8%***

5.7%***

Adjusted R-squared

0.27

0.32

0.20

Model 2‡

Change in Black-White survival gap for a change in D from 0.23 to 0.78

4.1%**

6.4%***

2.3%

Adjusted R-squared

0.43

0.50

0.31

Model 3¥

Change in Black-White survival gap for a change in D from 0.23 to 0.78

4.6%***

7.4%***

2.7%

Adjusted R-squared

0.40

0.46

0.30

In analyses accounting only for segregation (Model 1), a change in dissimilarity from 0.78 (highest segregation) to 0.23 (lowest segregation) was associated with a decrease in the white black survival gap of 8 percentage points for Blacks overall, 11 percentage points for Black men and 6 percentage points for Black women (p < .001).

Adding race-specific median household income (Model 2) or the SES index (Model 3), centered on the White population means, partially explained the effect of segregation on Black survival. Under the lowest segregation scenario, and with Black SES assumed to be at the White SES level scenario, the White- Black gap in predicted probabilities of survival was eliminated.

Sensitivity analyses using different cutoffs for the proportion of data imputed (i.e., 5% and 15%) showed similar results.

Discussion

In a contemporary national sample of Black and White individuals living in major US CBSAs, we found that Blacks had a lower probability of survival from age 35 to 75 than their White counterparts. Racial residential segregation was negatively associated with Black survival but did not affect survival for Whites. Consequently, the White-Black survival gap was substantially greater in more segregated compared with less segregated CBSAs. Additionally, we found that the association between segregation and the White-Black survival gap was partly, but not fully, explained by racial differences in socioeconomic status. The persistence and magnitude of current White-Black health disparities should be of major policy concern.

Our results concur with prior research showing that residential segregation is associated with higher mortality for Blacks, and that the effects of segregation are explained to various degrees by SES.[ 4, 34- 40] As compared to other studies using death rates as a primary outcome, our outcome, the probability of survival from age 35 to 75, focuses on the age range in which the influence of socioeconomic inequality and racism on health is most prominent and is likely to operate mainly through illness rates and severity. (The relationship between socioeconomic status and racial differences in mortality is greatly attenuated at older ages.[ 37]). Further, most prior studies that controlled for SES in analyses of segregation and health used a single measure of SES for the entire population. Only a couple of studies[ 36, 40] used race-specific SES measures, which is necessary to account for the fact that Blacks and Whites within the same metro area may live under very different socioeconomic conditions. By employing race-specific CBSA-level measures of socioeconomic status, our study was able to show that segregation specifically influences Black socioeconomic status and survival.

Our analyses also reveal that the effects of segregation on the White-Black survival gap are only in part explained by socioeconomic factors. Racial differences in living conditions fostered by segregation, including differences in housing and environmental quality, the social and built environment, the availability and quality of medical services, and pervasive interpersonal racism and discrimination may all contribute to worse Black health.

Importantly, our study suggests that racial residential segregation takes a particularly high toll on Black men. Only a handful of prior studies have examined the effects of segregation separately for men and women;[ 4, 36, 41, 42] two of these studies evaluated an isolated metro area, and most relied on data from the 1990s. There are multiple reasons why segregation may have larger effects on the health of adult Black men. First, men may be subjected to higher levels of institutional discrimination and pervasive negative stereotypes in the labor market. Prior research has shown that perceptions of racism and discrimination in the labor market may be higher among Black men than women.[ 43] Perceived discrimination in turn has detrimental effects on health.[ 19] Incarceration, which has tremendous negative effects on individual, family and community well-being, is yet another form of institutional discrimination that disproportionately affects black men.[ 44] Finally, the recent economic downturn has disproportionately affected Blacks. While pre-recession data showed that the White-Black income and wealth gap were slowly declining, post-recession analyses show a significant widening of the racial gap in income and wealth, and much higher rates of unemployment for Black compared to White men.[ 45]

Our study underscores that White-Black disparities in survival remain sizeable, driven by residential segregation and socioeconomic inequality. The solutions proposed have been many and varied, but what they have in common is a focus on ameliorating the differences in living conditions between black and white neighborhoods in highly segregated metropolitan areas.[ 46] Additionally, federal and state policymakers are expanding initiatives targeted at better employment opportunities and pathways to higher education for minority students.[ 47]

Our study has several limitations. First, the study was an ecological analysis of the association between the White-Black survival gap and contemporaneous measures of residential segregation and socioeconomic status. The effects of segregation and socioeconomic conditions on health are likely to reflect exposures that cumulate over the life course and may change over time as CBSAs change and people move. To the extent contemporaneous measures fail to capture accurately these cumulative exposures, they could be considered to measure the cumulative exposures with error. A standard statistical result suggests that, as a consequence, our analyses may understate the associations between the independent variables and survival.[ 48] Second, we evaluated the average effects of racial residential segregation and socioeconomic conditions on survival in different CBSAs. Individual characteristics and conditions in particular neighborhoods are likely to affect health as well, but we did not have data on these factors. Third, our study does not explore the specific mechanisms through which segregation and socioeconomic status may affect survival. Nonetheless, the ecological approach has proved extremely powerful in identifying relationships between the social conditions in an area and health outcomes. Our study is in this tradition.

The findings of this study provide evidence to support the notion that attempts to improve specific aspects of living conditions in disadvantaged Black neighborhoods, while imperative, are unlikely ever to be able to make a big enough difference. A direct attack on racial residential segregation, the root cause of differences between Whites and Blacks in living conditions and socioeconomic opportunity,[ 5] is also needed to reduce and ultimately eliminate White-Black health disparities.

The passing of the FHA in 1968 officially prohibited the discrimination concerning the sale or rental of housing based on race. However, the FHA also required the government to actively break down segregation and promote residential integration (i.e., to "affirmatively further fair housing"), a mandate that has been largely forgotten or ignored. Examples of FHA violations have been extensively documented,[ 49] including restrictive zoning laws that limit the number and size of multi-family housing or the concentration of new affordable housing in undesirable neighborhoods to name a few. In some instances, irregularities have continued even in the face of court rulings.[ 50] Other federal programs (e.g., the HOPE program) that focus on improving conditions in segregated communities (e.g., by demolishing distressed projects and replacing them with mixed-income housing within the same community) are promoting the equally unjust and untenable "separate but equal" doctrine.

Despite the general inertia, some local governments have shown that integration is possible. In the years immediately following the enactment of the FHA, Montgomery County in Maryland, one of the wealthiest counties in the US, passed a law enforcing the availability affordable public housing units and integrated housing development for lower-income residents. During the following decades, the county's black population more than tripled, while segregation is well below average and Montgomery County remains one of the nation's wealthiest counties.

Several public and private programs are now in place in major metropolitan areas to help promote fair housing policies, and may serve as positive examples and starting points for integration efforts. These programs assist minorities in finding and securing affordable rental housing, expand the availability of mortgage credits for low-income households, provide housing quality inspections and even offer post-move counseling to help minorities get access to areas of better socioeconomic opportunity.[ 51] Nevertheless, as our study shows, no initiative that merely focuses on the socioeconomic consequences of segregation without fully committing to tackle the root cause itself is likely to succeed.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by R01 award # HL118410 from the NHLBI. The conclusions of this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NHLBI.

Funding Statement

This study was supported by R01 award #HL118410 to IP from the NHLBI.

References

6. Link BG, Phelan J. Social conditions as fundamental causes of disease. J Health Soc Behav. 1995;Spec No:80-94. Epub 1995/01/01. . [[ PubMed] Google Scholar]

13. Kushner JA. Apartheid in America: An Historical and Legal Analysis of Contemporary Racial Segregation in the United States. Howard Law Journal. 1979;22(547):559-60. [ Google Scholar]

18. Phelan JC, Bruce G. Is Racism a Fundamental Cause of Inequalities in Health? Annual Review of Sociology. 2015;41:311-30 (First published online as a Review in Advance on May 1, 2015). doi: [ 10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112305 Google Scholar]

23. Compressed Mortality File 2009-2013. CDC WONDER On-line Database, compiled from Compressed Mortality File 2009-2013 Series X No X. 20XX [Internet]. [cited September, 2015]. Available from: http://wonder.cdc.gov/cmf-icd10.html

24. Vigdor JL, Glaeser E. The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America's Neighborhoods, 1890-2010. Center for State and Local Leadership (CSLL), 2012 January 22. Report No.

26. Preston SH, Heuveline P, Guillot M. Demography: measuring and modeling population processes. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers; 2001. xiii, 291 p. p. [ Google Scholar]

Articles from PLOS ONE are provided here courtesy of PLOS

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Racial residential segregation, socioeconomic disparities, and the White-Black survival gap

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PLoS One. 2018; 13(2): e0193222. Ioana Popescu, Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, 1, * Erin Duffy, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Visualization, 2 Joshua Mendelsohn, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Visualization, 2 and José J.

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[Roy Wilkins with a few of the 250,000 participants on the Mall heading for the Lincoln Memorial in the NAACP march on Washington on August 28, 1963]

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[Roy Wilkins with a few of the 250,000 participants on the Mall heading for the Lincoln Memorial in the NAACP march on Washington on August 28, 1963]

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#NoUSDoughToHelpJimCrow

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Silent protest parade in New York [City] against the East St. Louis riots, 1917. Library of Congress.

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Silent protest parade in New York [City] against the East St. Louis riots, 1917. Library of Congress.

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Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. "This is a country that allows everybody to express their views," said the first Black president, "allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust." Don't disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.

We've all been waiting for the grand jury's decision, not because most of us expected an indictment. District Attorney Robert P. McCulloch's convoluted statement explaining or rather, defending how the grand jury came to its decision resembled a victory speech. For a grand jury to find no probable cause even on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter is a stunning achievement in a police shooting of an unarmed teenager with his hands raised, several yards away. Distilling 4,799 pages of grand jury proceedings to less than twenty minutes, he managed to question the integrity of eyewitnesses, accuse the 24hour news cycle and social media for disrupting the investigation, and blame alleged neighborhood violence for why the removal of Mike Brown's body from the pavement had to wait until morning. McCulloch never indicted a cop in his life, so why expect anything different now?

Some waited hoping for a miracle; most waited because they knew a crisis was brewing. The white folks in St. Louis and surrounding municipalities, as well as the state of Missouri, used the waiting period to prepare for war. Residents bought more guns and ammunition, stockpiled on plywood to cover store windows, installed alarm systems and window bars, stocked up on food and water. Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency, calling up National Guard forces from across the state and beyond, training the state militia for riot control and counterinsurgency. The federal government has dispatched FBI agents, some presumably undercover operating inside protest movements. As I write these words, all forces are being deployed against protesters and the Black community more generally, and the governor has requested more National Guard troops.

Meanwhile, as we waited for the grand jury's decision, a twelveyearold Black boy named Tamir Rice was shot and killed by police in Cleveland because the officer mistook his toy gun for a real one. Tamir was playing outside of Cleveland's Cudell Recreation Center, one of the few public facilities left that provide safe space for children.

As we waited, Cleveland cops took the life of Tanisha Anderson, a 37yearold Black woman suffering from bipolar disorder. Police arrived at her home after family members called 911 to help her through a difficult crisis, but rather than treat her empathetically they did what they were trained to do when confronted with Black bodies in Black neighborhoods they treated her like an enemy combatant. When she became agitated, one officer wrestled her to the ground and cuffed her while a second officer pinned her " face down on the ground with his knee pressed down heavily into the back for 6 to 7 minutes, until her body went completely limp." She stopped breathing. They made no effort to administer CPR, telling the family and witnesses that she was sleeping. When the ambulance finally arrived twenty minutes later, she was dead.

As we waited, police in Ann Arbor, Michigan, killed a fortyyearold Black woman named Aura Rain Rosser. She was reportedly brandishing a kitchen knife when the cops showed up on a domestic violence call, although her boyfriend who made the initial report insisted that she was no threat to the officers. No matter; they opened fire anyway.

As we waited, a Chicago police officer fatally shot 19yearold Roshad McIntosh. Despite the officer's claims, several eyewitnesses reported that McIntosh was unarmed, on his knees with his hands up, begging the officer to hold his fire.

As we waited, police in Saratoga Springs, Utah, pumped six bullets into Darrien Hunt, a 22yearold Black man dressed kind of like a ninja and carrying a replica Samurai sword. And police in Victorville, California, killed Dante Parker, a 36yearold Black man and father of five. He had been stopped while riding his bike on suspicion of burglary. When he became "uncooperative," the officers repeatedly used Tasers to try to subdue him. He died from his injuries.

As we waited, a twentyeightyearold Black man named Akai Gurley met a similar fate as he descended a stairwell in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York, Brooklyn. The police were on a typical reconnaissance mission through the housing project. Officer Peter Liang negotiated the darkened stairwell, gun drawn in one hand, flashlight in the other, prepared to take down any threat he encountered. According to liberal mayor Bill DeBlasio and police chief Bill Bratton, Mr. Gurley was collateral damage. Apologies abound. He left a two yearold daughter.

As we waited, LAPD officers stopped 25yearold Ezell Ford, a mentally challenged Black man, in his own South Los Angeles neighborhood and shot him to death. The LAPD stopped Omar Abrego, a 37yearold father from Los Angeles, and beat him to death.

And as we waited and waited and waited, Darren Wilson got married, continued to earn a paycheck while on leave, and received over $400,000 worth of donations for his "defense."

You see, we've been waiting for dozens, hundreds, thousands of indictments and convictions. Every death hurts. Every exonerated cop, security guard, or vigilante enrages. The grand jury's decision doesn't surprise most Black people because we are not waiting for an indictment. We are waiting for justice or more precisely, struggling for justice. We all know the names and how they died. Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, Vonderitt D. Meyers, Jr., John Crawford III, Cary Ball Jr., Mike Brown, ad infinitum. They were unarmed and shot down by police under circumstances for which lethal force was unnecessary. We hold their names like recurring nightmares, accumulating the dead like ghoulish baseball cards. Except that there is no trading. No forgetting. Just a stack of dead bodies that rises every time we blink. For the last three trayvonsgenerations, Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Stewart, Eula Love, Amadu Diallo, Oscar Grant, Patrick Dorismond, Malice Green, Tyisha Miller, Sean Bell, Aiyana StanleyJones, Margaret LaVerne Mitchell, to name a few, have become symbols of racist police violence. And I'm only speaking of the dead not the harassed, the beaten, the humiliated, the stoppedandfrisked, the raped.

Meanwhile, Governor Jay Nixon, President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, the mainstream press and every stateanointed Negro leader lecture Black people to stay calm and remain nonviolent, when the main source of violence has been the police. Mike Brown's murder brought people out to the streets, where they were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. State violence is always rendered invisible in a world where cops and soldiers are heroes, and what they do is always framed as "security," protection, and selfdefense. Police occupy the streets to protect and serve the citizenry from (Black) criminals out of control. This is why, in every instance, there is an effort to depict the victim as assailant Trayvon Martin used the sidewalk as a weapon, Mike Brown used his big body. A lunge or a glare from a Black person can constitute an imminent threat. When the suburb of Ferguson blew up following Mike Brown's killing on August 9, the media and mainstream leadership were more concerned with looting and keeping the "peace" than the fact that Darren Wilson was free on paid leave. Or that leaving Brown's bulletriddled, lifeless body, on the street for four and a half hours, bleeding, cold, stiff from rigor mortis, constituted a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It was, after all, an act of collective punishment the public display of the tortured corpse was intended to terrorize the entire community, to punish everyone into submission, to remind others of their fate if they step out of line. We used to call this "lynching."

War? Yes, war. The immediate and sustained resistance to the police following Mike Brown's murder revealed the low intensity war between the state and Black people, and the disproportionate use of force against protesters following the grand jury's decision escalated the conflict. To the world at large, Ferguson looked like a war zone because the police resembled the military with their helmets, flak jackets, armed personnel carriers, and M16 rifles. But AfricanAmerican residents of Ferguson and St Louis proper, and in impoverished communities across the country, did not have to endure tear gas or face down riot cops to know that they were already living in a war zone hence Mike Brown's and Dorian Johnson's initial trepidation toward the police.

Past and present police violence in the area gave Brown and Johnson good reason to fear Wilson. The prosecution turned what may have seemed like a reasonable act of selfdefense on the part of a startled and angry eighteenyearold kid into an "assault of a law officer in the first degree." That Wilson feared for his life was all he needed to justify lethal force. But it is the instructions to the grand jury toward the end of the threemonthlong deliberations that deserve our attention. After asking jurors to judge Wilson's actions against Missouri statute on police use of deadly force, the assistant county prosecutors, Sheila Whirley and Kathi Alizadeh, suddenly announced that after "doing our research" they learned that the statute had been superseded by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. In lieu of the decision and the old statute, Whirley wrote up a description of how the law applies when an officer can use force when making an arrest. When a grand juror began asking questions for clarification, Whirley explains that the old law "is not entirely incorrect or inaccurate, but there is something that is not correct, ignore it totally." She then indicates that they will rely on the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Tennessee v. Garner (1985), "not that that matters much to you...We don't want to get into a law class." She went on to focus on the selfdefense instruction.

But just a quick glance at the decision reveals that the ruling was intended to limit the use of deadly force, arguing that killing a fleeing suspect constitutes an intrusive "seizure" potentially violating 4th Amendment protections against being deprived of life. If a suspect is not armed and dangerous, the use of deadly force is not warranted and thus the seizure of life is not reasonable.

Whether we call it a war on drugs, or "Operation Ghetto Storm" as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement dubs it, what we are dealing with is nothing less than permanent war waged by the state and its privatized allies on a mostly poor and marginalized Black and Brown workingclass. Five centuries in the making, it stretches from slavery and imperialism to massive systematic criminalization. We see the effects on our children, in the laws that make it easier to prosecute juveniles as adults; in the deluge of zero tolerance policies (again a byproduct of the war on drugs); in the startling fact that expulsions and suspensions have risen exponentially despite a significant decline in violent crime. Crisis, moral panics, neoliberal policies, racism fuel an expansive system of human management based on incarceration, surveillance, containment, pacification, lethal occupation, and gross misrepresentation.

The Black community of Ferguson and adjacent communities experience war every single day, in routine police stops, fines for noise ordinance violations (e.g., playing loud music), for farehopping on St. Louis's light rail system, for uncut grass or unkempt property, trespassing, wearing "saggy pants," expired driver's license or registration, "disturbing the peace," among other things. If these fines or tickets are not paid, they may lead to jail time, the loss of one's car or other property, or the loss of one's children to social services. The criminal justice system is used to exact punishment and tribute, a kind of racial tax, on poor/working class Black people. In 2013, Ferguson's municipal court issued nearly 33,000 arrest warrants to a population of just over 21,000, generating about $2.6 million dollars in income for the municipality. That same year, 92 percent of searches and 86 percent of traffic stops in Ferguson involved black people, this despite the fact that one in three whites was found carrying illegal weapons or drugs, while only one in five blacks had contraband.

And yet, defenders of the status quo always deflect critiques of state violence by citing the number of intraracial homicides in lowincome Black communities. Who can forget former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's recent quip to Michael Eric Dyson on "Meet the Press"?: "White police officers wouldn't be there [in black neighborhoods] "if you weren't killing each other." Racist bluster, to be sure, but such assertions have succeeded in foreclosing a deeper interrogation of how neoliberal policies (i.e., dismantling the welfare state; promoting capital flight; privatizing public schools, hospitals, housing, transit, and other public resources; investing in police and prisons,) are a form of state violence that produces scarcity, environmental and health hazards, poverty, and alternative (illegal) economies rooted in violence and subjugation.

Ironically, Giuliani's vitriol makes a compelling case for the failure of modern law enforcement. If the police are charged with keeping the peace and protecting citizens, but instead have contributed to the "epidemic" of violent deaths, then a case can be made for the complete withdrawal of the police from Black and Brown neighborhoods. The police are trained for combat and often regard the youth in lowincome communities of color as potential enemy combatants. This is why the killing of "innocent" Black men in dark stairwells, Black women with kitchen knives, or little boys brandishing toy guns are not accidents. Cops patrol these areas with their weapon close at hand; behind every shadow lurks a suspect, and in war it is kill or be killed.

In light of Missouri's failure to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown, calling for the withdrawal of the police even temporarily is a reasonable demand for people terrorized by state violence and feeling particularly vulnerable over their safety. They want law and order, but the police have shown a consistent disrespect for the law, flagrantly violated the Constitution, and operated with little to no accountability. Instead, the police operate as a rogue outfit, their actions create disorder and fear. Furthermore, failure to indict effectively exonerates the police force, providing a pretext for the police to ramp up violence and repression in response to the legitimate expression of anger and frustration over the government's failure to protect Black lives and ensure justice. It is already happening in the aftermath of the grand jury's decision, as riot police invade the headquarters of Hands Up United as well as designated safe spaces.

The young organizers in Ferguson from Hands Up United, Lost Voices, Organization for Black Struggle, Don't Shoot Coalition, Millennial Activists United, and the like, understand they are at war. Tef Poe, Tory Russell, Montague Simmons, Cheyenne Green, Ashley Yates, and many other young Black activists in the St. Louis area have not been waiting around for an indictment. Nor are they waiting for the much vaunted Federal probe, for they have no illusions about a federal government that provides military hardware to local police, builds prisons, kills tens of thousands by manned and unmanned planes without due process, and arms Israel in its illegal wars and occupation. They have been organizing. So have the young Chicago activists who founded We Charge Genocide and the Black Youth Project, and the Los Angelesbased youth who make up the Community Rights Campaign, and the hundreds of organizations across the country challenging everyday state violence and occupation. They remind us, not only that Black lives matter that should be selfevident but that resistance matters. It matters because we are still grappling with the consequences of settler colonialism, racial capitalism and patriarchy. It mattered in postKatrina New Orleans, a key battleground in neoliberalism's unrelenting war on working people, where Black organizers lead multiracial coalitions to resist the privatization of schools, hospitals, public transit, public housing, and dismantling public sector unions. The young people of Ferguson continue to struggle with ferocity, not just to get justice for Mike Brown or to end police misconduct but to dismantle racism once and for all, to bring down the Empire, to ultimately end war.

[ Robin D. G. Kelley, who teaches at UCLA, is the author of the remarkable biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009) and most recently Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012). He is a contributor to Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence.]

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Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. "This is a country that allows everybody to express their views," said the first Black president, "allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust." Don't disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.

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“In Villa Grimaldi, Chile, a place where Pinochet tortured and executed numerous people. People informed me that around 60% of Chile's palestenian population, that is among the richest in the sphere, supported Pinochet’s rule. Pinochet was loved because he was a neoliberal, not because he tortured and murdered people. They were simply more concerned about retaining their money and privileges than addressing the abuse. A similar thing occurred in South Africa” (Davis 40).

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A key part of the creation of the NAACP is the Springfield Riot. The Springfield Riot was a mob attack against African Americans for 2-4 days in August of 1908, perpetrated by around 5,000 white people. The event was triggered when two black men (arrested as suspects of crimes) were transferred out of the area when a group of white men were searching to lynch them. After the events of the Springfield Riot a group of white and black individuals seeking racial peace and equality came together to form the NAACP. Those individuals include:
W. E. B. Du Bois
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Mary Church Terrell
Mary White Ovington
Oswald Garrison
William English Walling
Dr. Henry Moscowitz

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Frederick Douglas wrote about the tendency to impute crime to color. He pointed out that a white man in Black face committed a whole range of crimes because he knew well that he would not be suspected by virtue of the fact that he was white” (Davis 33).

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Death of Trayvon Martin
Death of Micheal Brown
Death of Eric Garner
Death of George Floyd

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Important People in creating the Black Lives Matter movement 

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Important People in creating the Black Lives Matter movement 

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2013-2014

Alicia Garza
Patrisse Cullors
Opal Tometi

These three African American women were sick of feeling unrepresented so they sought out to change that.  They together, created the Black Lives Matter movement.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ydWki4hitVEAfzJggC6OuobWVuns0_xSZM78DqOdzM/edit