"The main thesis posits that the operational existence of Black-on-Black violence in the U.S. is psychologically and economically mandated by a white-dominated status quo. The criminalization of the Black American male is a psycho-politically engineered process designed to maintain the dependency and relative powerlessness of the African -American and Pan-African communities. It moves far beyond blaming the offending party toward an exposure of the psycho-social and intra-psychical dynamics of black-on-black criminality. Wilson contends that though this violence is orchestrated by white America's need to maintain its oppressive domination of black America, its ending is the primary responsibility of blacks here and abroad"--

This book explores the societal construction of "black-on-black" referring to the 1980s when violence among African American perpetrators and victims increased. Massive job losses, debased identities, and rampant physical decay made American blacks seem ripe for explosive behavior. Many people blamed black lifestyle, values, and culture. David Wilson shows how America imbued a process of violence with race and accepted it as one of the country's most vexing ills during the Reagan era and afterward. Based on statistics, ethnographies, anecdotal accounts, and national reportage the findings are hard to dispute. Wilson tells of prominent conservative and liberal writers, reporters and politicians who collectively nurtured this issue, then parlayed it into "truth" in the public mind. Mixing memoirs, critical geographical studies, and race theory, the book shows how vulnerable groups of society can become pawns in an acute process of racial demonization. And how, in America, this allowed blacks to be marginalized.

1919, The Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I. The emerging New Negro identity, which prized unflinching resistance to second-class citizenship, further inspired veterans and their fellow black citizens. In city after city - Washington, DC; Chicago; Charleston; and elsewhere - black men and women took up arms to repel mobs that used lynching, assaults, and other forms of violence to protect white supremacy; yet, authorities blamed blacks for the violence, leading to mass arrests and misleading news coverage. Refusing to yield, African Americans sought accuracy and fairness in the courts of public opinion and the law. This is the first account of this three-front fight - in the streets, in the press, and in the courts - against mob violence during one of the worst years of racial conflict in US history.

Lane offers a historical explanation for rising levels of black urban crime and family instability during a paradoxical era. Modern crime rates and patterns are shown to be products of a historical culture traceable from its formative years. The author charts Philadelphia's story but also makes suggestions about national and international patterns.

'This book is a splendid contribution to American history, and it deserves praise for its comprehensive and sensitive treatment of a topic that many would like to avoid. By taking the reader through the maelstrom and horrors of the black experience since the Civil War, the book provides a greater understanding of the pathological nature of racism and the profound contradictions between our national ideals and the realities of American society. It also helps dispel the myth that violence has been merely tangential to our national experience. American Historical Review

Examines the vast array of art produced by African Americans in response to the continuing impact of anti-Black violence and how it is used to protest, process, mourn and memorialize those events.

Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

Violence Against Black Bodies argues that black deaths at the hands of police are just one form of violence that black and brown people face daily in the western world. Through the voices of scholars from different academic disciplines, this book gives readers an opportunity to put the cases together and see that violent deaths in police custody are just one tentacle of the racial order—a hierarchy which is designed to produce trauma and discrimination according to one’s perceived race and ethnicity.

Break the silence surrounding Black women's experiences of violence! Written from a Black feminist perspective by therapists, researchers, activists, and survivors, Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue sheds new light on an understudied field. For too long, Black women have been suffering the effects of violence in painful silence. This book—winner of the Carolyn Payton Early Career Award for its contribution to the understanding of the role of gender in the lives of Black women—provides a forum where personal testimony and academic research meet to show you how living at the intersection of many kinds of oppression shapes the lives of Black women. With moving case studies, in-depth discussions of activism and resistance, and helpful suggestions for treatment and intervention, this book will help you understand the impact of violence on the lives of Black women. Topics you'll find in Violence in the Lives of Black Women include: using the arts to deal with sexual aggression in the Black community racial aspects of sexual harassment the consequences of head and brain injuries stemming from abuse domestic violence in African-American lesbian relationships strategies Black women use to escape violent living situations lifelong effects of childhood sexual abuse on Black women's mental health references and resources to help you learn more!