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This image personifies the critical and fundamental idea regarding policing with respect to the profound discrimination against African Americans in the United States. In a country founded on freedom, liberty, and justice for all, we reach a contradiction within the very blueprint of our nation. Our founding fathers failed to identify and recognize African Americans as human beings which caused a profound ripple effect in our society centuries later.

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The Birmingham Campaign was a critical civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the early year of 1963. This campaign’s main objective was to illuminate the injustices of segregation and to call forth leaders to initiate a desegregation of the facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. However, despite Dr. King’s emphasis on peaceful protests, he was arrested. The following days epitomizes the disgusting levels of discrimination and barbaric acts of brutality towards unarmed African American citizens protesting for equality.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama's existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city's segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham's merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group's "Birmingham Manifesto," the campaign was "a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive" (ACMHR, 3 April 1963).

The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963, but was postponed until 2 April when the relatively moderate Albert Boutwell defeated Birmingham's segregationist commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, in a run-off mayoral election. On 3 April the desegregation campaign was launched with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. King spoke to black citizens about the philosophy of nonviolence and its methods, and extended appeals for volunteers at the end of the mass meetings. With the number of volunteers increasing daily, actions soon expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested.

On 10 April the city government obtained a state circuit court injunction against the protests. After heavy debate, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order. King declared: "We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process" (ACMHR, 11 April 1963). Plans to continue to submit to arrest were threatened, however, because the money available for cash bonds was depleted, so leaders could no longer guarantee that arrested protesters would be released. King contemplated whether he and Ralph Abernathy should be arrested. Given the lack of bail funds, King's services as a fundraiser were desperately needed, but King also worried that his failure to submit to arrests might undermine his credibility. King concluded that he must risk going to jail in Birmingham. He told his colleagues: "I don't know what will happen; I don't know where the money will come from. But I have to make a faith act" (King, 73).

On Good Friday, 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was kept in solitary confinement. During this time King penned the" Letter from Birmingham Jail" on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published in that newspaper by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests. King's request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home. Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963.

In order to sustain the campaign, SCLC organizer James Bevel proposed using young children in demonstrations. Bevel's rationale for the Children's Crusade was that young people represented an untapped source of freedom fighters without the prohibitive responsibilities of older activists. On 2 May more than 1,000 African American students attempted to march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. When hundreds more gathered the following day, Commissioner Connor directed local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstrations. During the next few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. While leading a group of child marchers, Shuttlesworth himself was hit with the full force of a fire hose and had to be hospitalized. King offered encouragement to parents of the young protesters: "Don't worry about your children, they're going to be alright. Don't hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for not only themselves, but for all of America and for all mankind" (King, 6 May 1963).

In the meantime, the white business structure was weakening under adverse publicity and the unexpected decline in business due to the boycott, but many business owners and city officials were reluctant to negotiate with the protesters. With national pressure on the White House also mounting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between prominent black citizens and representatives of Birmingham's Senior Citizen's Council, the city's business leadership.

The Senior Citizen's Council sought a moratorium on street protests as an act of good faith before any final settlement was declared, and Marshall encouraged campaign leaders to halt demonstrations, accept an interim compromise that would provide partial success, and negotiate the rest of their demands afterward. Some black negotiators were open to the idea, and although the hospitalized Shuttlesworth was not present at the negotiations, on 8 May King told the negotiators he would accept the compromise and call the demonstrations to a halt.

When Shuttlesworth learned that King intended to announce a moratorium he was furious-about both the decision to ease pressure off white business owners and the fact that he, as the acknowledged leader of the local movement, had not been consulted. Feeling betrayed, Shuttlesworth reminded King that he could not legitimately speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own: "Go ahead and call it off ... When I see it on TV, that you have called it off, I will get up out of this, my sickbed, with what little ounce of strength I have, and lead them back into the street. And your name'll be Mud" (Hampton and Fayer, 136). King made the announcement anyway, but indicated that demonstrations might be resumed if negotiations did not resolve the situation shortly.

By 10 May negotiators had reached an agreement, and despite his falling out with King, Shuttlesworth joined him and Abernathy to read the prepared statement that detailed the compromise: the removal of "Whites Only" and "Blacks Only" signs in restrooms and on drinking fountains, a plan to desegregate lunch counters, an ongoing "program of upgrading Negro employment," the formation of a biracial committee to monitor the progress of the agreement, and the release of jailed protesters on bond ("The Birmingham Truce Agreement," 10 May 1963).

Birmingham segregationists responded to the agreement with a series of violent attacks. That night an explosive went off near the Gaston Motel room where King and SCLC leaders had previously stayed, and the next day the home of King's brother Alfred Daniel King was bombed. President John F. Kennedy responded by ordering 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham and making preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Four months later, on 15 September, Ku Klux Klan members bombed Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. King delivered the eulogy at the 18 September joint funeral of three of the victims, preaching that the girls were "the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity" (King, " Eulogy for the Martyred Children," 18 September 1963).

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In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama's existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city's segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham's merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year.

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The sentencing for crack cocaine was much higher than that of powder cocaine. There was a minimum sentence of 5 years for possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine, while the same 5 year sentence was reserved for 500 grams of powder cocaine. This unfair standard was reversed just 10 years ago after decades of unfair sentence lengths which disproportionately affected Black communities.

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In this video we are able to observe a male African American citizen who’s absolutely terrified for not only his life, but the patient he’s currently looking after. We see Charlie Kinsey laying on the concrete with his arms raised perpendicular with respect to his body, exclaiming he’s unarmed, but somehow manages to get shot by police officers who harbor extreme prejudice towards his artificial race.

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Police Shoot Unarmed Black Man With Hands Up [CAUGHT ON TAPE]

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Policing in schools in communities with gang violence has also become common. Research done by the American Public Health Association shows that policing-- specifically being targeted based on race and undergoing "frisking" often -- causes long term anxiety and trauma. As a result, students at these schools are negatively affected and underperform. Studies also show that more intrusive physical contact worsens mental health. The mental health epidemic due to policing is a topic that is often overlooked and needs to be addressed openly in order to make change.

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In 2016 Harvard found that the employment rate between the formerly incarcerated is much lower than those who aren’t. But when we take a look at the employment rates between races along with their average earnings, we see that the employment rate and the average wage of White non-Hispanic Americans is higher than the Black and Hispanic population. Even after serving their sentence, they are still affected at a disproportionate rate.

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Although the ratification of the 13th Amendment saw the end of slavery, segregation and discrimination were prevalent. These laws, known as Jim Crow, oppressed African-Americans, which sequentially led to lower-income on average, and an overwhelming sentiment of being "beneath" the White race. This, as well as derogatory representation in media, saw the rise of wrongful stereotypes and prejudice against African-Americans. The Harlem riot of 1935 is a reflection of this. A shopkeeper had suspected a Black boy of stealing candy, and witnesses watched as a cop began abusing the boy. Years of discrimination, constant prejudice, and racism manifested itself in a riot. The upheaval saw 3 people killed and around seventy African Americans arrested. Today, it stands as an example of how the history of Black policing has left entire communities traumatized.

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Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted.

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Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted.

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We can see a clear bias in courts by examining the exoneration rates between races. In 2017, the National Registry of Exonerations revealed that Black people have much higher exoneration rates than White people. This means, that the court systems are more likely to convict an innocent Black person than an innocent White person.

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Male POC receive longer prison sentences for relatively similar crimes

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Male POC receive longer prison sentences for relatively similar crimes

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Both young hispanic and Black males recieve longer average prison sentences than young white males. While older hispanics males receive a longer average prison sentence. Older white and black males receive the same average prison sentence but all three groups still receive more prison time than young white males. This shows the innate biases that judges handing out these sentences have and their clear preference toward young white males

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This picture shows the police search rate to the 3 races of people for recreational marijuana before and after the marijuana is legalized (around 2013) in Colorado and Washington states. By looking at the chart, apparently, racial disparities and bias still exist even when recreational marijuana is legalized.

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Female POC receive longer prison sentences for relatively similar crimes

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Female POC receive longer prison sentences for relatively similar crimes

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When comparing groups of young women to that of young white males, young white women receive shorter sentences than their male counter part. Young black women receive shorter sentences than young white males but still higher than their white counterpart and young hispanic women receive longer sentences than young black and white women and young white men. Older white women receive similar sentences as young white men. Both older black and hispanic women receive longer sentences than young white men and older white women, which hispanics receiving the highest. This figure clearly shows the preference judges in this country have toward young white females with them receiving the lowest average prison sentences of both men and woman, and how harshly POCs are treat with them receiving higher sentences than their white counterparts and Older hispanic men receiving the highest average sentence.