Attorney Benjamin Crump

The first black slaves in the U.S. were brought to Virginia shores in 1620. In 399 years we still have not accepted all humans in the “United” States as equal citizens. No doubt we will “celebrate” the 400th year of our Civil War in 2020. We often hear the term “genocide” used in describing the cause of wars in other parts of the world such as Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the current discussions about votes concerning an old war in Armenia. In Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, it is described as  “any of the following acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”Florida civil rights attorney Ben Crump has just published “Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People” where he makes a good case that American colored  are the victims of genocide as defined by the United Nations. He has represented the families of Trayvon Martine and Michael Brown, two well-known black teenagers killed by whites.Having lived in the South for three years during Jim Crow days and having command of machinegun platoons and rifle companies with many black Marines, I have always had a keen interest in race relations and racial politics. In this period we still had many lynchings, although most were conducted without the huge cheering crowds of whites as in the 19thCentury. Over 4,400 terroristic lynchings have been accounted for by the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. 

Crump Is Right: The Evidence Of Genocide In 399 Years Is Overwhelming 

Genocide plays a role in Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee in 2016 to demonstrate how blacks are treated. Because he is protesting the treatment of his race he has been “black”balled by the owners of 32 pro football teams for three years—at the age of 32. I know a little bit about football, having played eight years of high school and college football and honored as an All-Conference player twice and captain of my college football team. As principal of two Fargo high schools I have hired a number of football coaches, supervised hundreds of games, and have made Corky wonder about my sanity in watching hundreds of pro games for the last 60 years.In my opinion Kaepernick at the present time is better than 16 of the starting quarterbacks in the National Football League and infinitely better than 32 backups. Look at his record as starting San Francisco 49’er QB in one Super Bowl and several regular seasons. The owners are clearly saying that black lives don’t matter, although both the NFL and the NBA are dominated by black players. That’s a definition of genocide.The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Philandro Castile, Tamer Rice, Michael Brown, Stephen Clark and hundreds of other young black men killed by vigilantes and police show that the leaders of our society indicate their lives had no value. While blacks make up only 13% of our population they make up 27% of all arrests, 33% of those in jail or prison, and 42% of prisoners living on death rows. We put blacks in jail for 20 years for using or selling crack cocaine and put whites in jail for a few months for using or selling white powder cocaine. State governments put blacks in jail for long prison terms for possessing or selling it. We keep filling coffins and jail cells with blacks. That’s genocide. 

Let’s Go Back To The Start Of The U.S. Genocide 

We need to remember that 12 of our 45 presidents were slave owners. George Washington was the richest man in Virginia when he was president because he married Martha, a rich widow, who owned well over a 100 slaves. George claimed he would free all their slaves when he died, but Martha refused and kept them in slavery. Thomas Jefferson became a connoisseur of fine wines and thick books as a gentleman farmer because over 600 humans slaved in his fields during his adult life.. He also enjoyed the company of his slave Sally Hemings. She presented him with six children, four surviving. Was it rape or consensual sex? It certainly didn’t matter to him—and perhaps she didn’t matter to him at all. He wrote something about all men being equal. Ironically. the last president to own a slave was Ulysses S. Grant. He owned 35-yer-old William Jones in 1859 but freed him before the Civil War started. Grant has often been credited with defeating the Confederacy.The long institution of slavery has encouraged states to put felony labels on minorities so they are unable to vote, unable to access good housing, unable to qualify for good paying jobs, and often ineligible for even purchasing life insurance. One black protester said: “Felonies make us part of the living dead.”In the 21stCentury we even have environmental racism. Most oil refineries are surrounded by low-income black neighborhoods. The most lead-polluted city in Michigan is Flint which is 84% black. After years of complaints and lawsuits the water supply is still loaded with lead. Another genocidal statistic: In New York City 53% of children in foster care are black—when the city population is 25% black.We have to start teaching real history at all levels in our schools instead of fake history to preserve white dominance. For a long time old slave states dictated what would be in the textbooks sold throughout the United States. Texas politicians, as an example, often dictated what went into textbooks because of the size of their market. Part of the crime of genocide is never telling the truth. 

How Can We Get Our Democracy Back After The Rule Of Our Great Leader? 

I have admired the social and political philosophy of Robert Reich who has served three presidents, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton cabinet and later taught social and political policy at Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at Berkeley. He also served as an economic adviser to Barack Obama. He has been a contributing editor for The New Republic, The American Prospect, the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and often appears as a political analyst on major TV news shows. He has written 18 books on the U.S. economy over the years and is considered a moderate Democrat. He is a “Never Trumper” for many good reasons.He has listed 10 steps to save American democracy from the “Always Trumper”:1. Make voter registration automatic for all eligible voters.2. Pass a new Voting Rights Act which would establish uniform standards for the nation to prevent states from passing restrictive voting rules about number of precincts and voting machines.3. Implement public financing of elections and eliminate big private money.4. Require public disclosure of all political contributions.5. End the revolving door between serving in government and lobbying,6. Ban members of Congress from owning specific shares of stock. Require them to use index funds, if any,7. Require all candidates running for Congress and the presidency to release tax returns.8. Eliminate gerrymandering of districts by creating independent redistricting commissions.9. Make the Electoral College irrelevant. End the domination of the Senate by small states.10. Demand the Supreme Court reverse its Citizens United decision that opened up a tsunami of plutocratic “dark” money to both political parties and all greedy politicians. 

After 399 Years Are Blacks Now Considered To Be More Than Three/Fifths Human?

 Over 220 years ago a compromise was reached in writing the constitution that three out of five slaves would be counted in the first national census, known as the three/fifths clause, because they were only about three-fifths human. John Madison took one slave with him when he went to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The 24-year-old slave was called Billey, who was given to Madison as a present when he was eight. During the convention Billey evidently learned so much about freedom that Madison determined he could not take Billey home with him because he would infect Madison’s other slaves with “freedom talk.” He dumped Billey out on the streets as a free man. That clearly fits the definition of genocide.Voting by blacks since 1865 has always been a very risky  business. During Jim Crow and “Separate but Equal” days only about two percent of the black population actually voted. (While we lived in North Carolina Corky’s sister lived with us and attended high school in a ‘separate but equal’ school. Her school was brick. The black school was a tarpaper shack.) The Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960’s opened the polls somewhat, but it was still a risky personal and physical challenge. And it has remained so. The Supreme Court in 2013 opened the doors to hundreds of voter suppression laws  by falsely claiming the election of Obama ended racial discrimination. The decision ended the Justice Department’s supervision of southern states covered by the Voting Rights Act, and the flood of voter suppression laws saturated many parts of the country. Before the Voting Rights Act, all-white primaries, difficult literacy tests for blacks, poll taxes, and many incidents of violent intimidation suppressed the vote in many states. After the suspension of Section Four by the Supreme Court many states passed stringent voter ID laws, designed punitive voter purges of voting lists and rolls, and, of course, encouraged the intimidation around voting precincts by white protesters and law enforcement. 

This Is How You Suppress Voting In The United States 

Here are just a few ways in keeping minorities out of polling booths:

1. Close down precincts and close polling stations in black precincts.

2. Move precinct boundaries every election and “forget” to publish changes.

3. Park police cars outside polling places and have white policemen patrol the area.

4. Shorten the length of the voting period.

5. Decrease the number of voting machines and have a sufficient number “malfunction” during the peak hours of voting.

6. Keep running out of paper ballots in black precincts.

7. Publish the wrong dates for the voting days.

8. Have complex voter ID laws and change them every two years.

9. Outlaw the use of college ID cards and other sources such as tax and utility bills as voter identification.

10. Purge voting rolls every two years. This is a very short list. States have employed dozens of other ways to keep minorities  from voting—such as eliminating all convicted felons from voting for life. That’s a great favorite in southern states to keep millions of blacks from voting. The march to genocide continues. 

On November 20 a 16-year-old white teenager from Georgia was arrested for planning to attack black churchgoers with butcher knives and other sharp weapons. On the same day a white policeman in Indianawas fired for telling two black men in a mall parking lot that “I got my rights to do anything I want to do!” Ben Crump was right. These methods are acts of genocide.