[ABHM] Lecture series asks ‘Do Black Lives Matter?’

ABHM Head Griot Reggie Jackson is interviewed about the origins of the devaluation of black lives in America. His four-session series covers a 400-year history of the laws, court decisions, customs, pseudo-science, medicine, policing, and other practices that justify and support that attitude that black lives do not matter.

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Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide

At least 385 people were shot and killed by police nationwide during the first five months of this year, more than two a day, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade.

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Officer in Freddie Gray case demanded man’s arrest as part of personal dispute

Baltimore lieutenant Brian Rice used his position to threaten ‘heads will roll’ if officers did not arrest his ex-girlfriend’s husband, police report reveals.
The most senior Baltimore police officer charged over the death of Freddie Gray used his position to order the arrest of a man as part of a personal dispute just two weeks before the fatal incident, prompting an internal inquiry by Baltimore police department.

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What’s Happening In Baltimore Didn’t Just Start With Freddie Gray

This week’s chaos on the streets of Baltimore has been decades in the making.

Violence erupted in the city on Monday after days of largely peaceful protests over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who recently died of injuries he sustained while in police custody. But Gray’s death was just the latest point on a timeline stretching back generations, one that encompasses all manner of racial inequity and human indignity.

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Thousands dead, few prosecuted

Among the thousands of fatal shootings at the hands of police since 2005, only 54 officers have been charged, a Post analysis found. Most were cleared or acquitted in the cases that have been resolved.

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