This past week’s international civil disturbances, sparked by the ‘lynching’ of a Black man in Minneapolis, took me back four decades to the killing/murder of Earnest Lacy by Milwaukee police officers.
The similarities between the Lacy killing and that of George Floyd in Minneapolis are eerily striking, right down to the resulting public fervor and demonstrations.
But so are the dissimilarities, including the anti-climatic ending in Milwaukee, the response of public officials, and the make-up of demonstrators.
Indeed, while the Floyd ‘lynching’ resulted in the immediate firing of the four officers involved, and murder charges against one, the initial demonstrations over the Lacy murder were necessary to force the city to even hold an inquest.
The most striking difference in the two cases was the availability of video, which in the Floyd case, provided proof positive of both the details of his ‘public lynching, as well as the insensitivity and total disregard to the Black man’s unanswered plea for his life.
Some have suggested that institutional racism has subsided over the four decades since the Lacy murder and that Milwaukee is a much better place for people of color.
Many of those pundits could say the same about Minnesota, which has a reputation for being a progressive state with great opportunities for its citizens regardless of their ethnicity.
In both cases, they would be wrong. Milwaukee, still reeling from several questionable killings by police—including the murder of Joel Acevedo a few short weeks ago by an off duty cop—leads the nation in seven negative social indicators and has been judged the worst city for African Americans to live in the country.
Some of the citizens participating in demonstrations over the weekend were wearing the same shoes they wore during similar marches for Donte Hamilton a couple of years ago.
In fact, Hamilton’s family members led several of the marches.
Minnesota does not lead the nation in negative social indicators, but ranks among the worst in educational disparities, and has a Black unemployment rate that is three times higher than it is for Whites. The Black income gap is 35% of what Whites earn on average, and homeownership is less than a third that of Whites.
One glaring difference between the two neighboring states, which have similar-sized Black populations, can be found in its criminal justice paradigm. While Wisconsin has the highest African American incarceration rate in the country, Minnesota has the lowest.
But that statistic does not translate into disparities in the application of criminal justice.
Lacy and Floyd were killed using the same technique, and in each case, their cries were ignored by police officers who abused their power and tried to hide behind badges that provide them with immunity and, in some cases, applause.
If nothing else, both cases proved, once again, that despite political and civil cries to the contrary, that ‘Black Lives Didn’t, and Still Don’t Matter.’
Lacy was just entering adulthood when the three cops stopped him after leaving a grocery store on 23rd and Wisconsin Avenue. Police were on the lookout for a rape suspect, whose description could fit every other Black man in Milwaukee.
What happened next depends on whose version you believe, but according to the perpetrators…err, police…Lacy bolted, was subsequently taken down and gingerly subdued, with civility and a sense of humanity as their primary consideration.
In truth, Lacy was slammed to the ground with excessive force, each officer holding down an extremity, and one putting his knee—and full weight—on his shoulder and neck area, essentially cutting off Lacy’s airflow, several witnesses testified.
The police report was obviously fudged, as they are in most similar incidents, including the initial report on the Floyd murder.
While the Minneapolis chief of police was quick to condemn his officers for violating Floyd’s human rights, Milwaukee had the misfortunate of having an avowed racist leading our police department in Chief Harold Breier. Had there been video in the Lacy case, it would have been irrelevant, or considered ‘fake news.’
Breier exonerated his officers before he assembled a team of colleagues and friends met in order to hold an ‘official’ internal investigation of the incident.
We can only speculate if the Minnesota chief would have fired his officers based on the testimony without the video of officer Derek Chauvin callously applying pressure to Floyd as his begged for mercy. But I doubt if the Minnesota criminal justice community would have sought to delay, distort and sabotage the investigation the way the Milwaukee Police Department did in the Lacy case.
The advent of camera phones has changed that paradigm. For the last decade, the public has been able to watch in panoramic color as police killed dozens of Black men, even if they were exonerated later. There is no longer a question of whether it’s justice or ‘Just-Us.’
Within the last few weeks, phone cameras resulted in charges against a former cop and his son for the murder of a Black jogger. It also forced the apology of a White female in New York who falsely accused a Harvard educated Black man of assault after he asked her to leash her stray dog.
That latter incident could have turned into a modern-day Emmitt Till scenario, a Black youth who was lynched for ‘looking (or, as legend has it, whistling) at a White woman’ in the racist south. Some historians believed Till’s lynching was a warning to Black men around the country. Some also believe the score of questionable police killings of Black men, and women, in the last decade fall in the same category.
A paradigm that replaces the Fugitive Slave Act.
Even without video, I assume had Lacy been killed recently, his death would have sparked national interest, if for no other reason than the fact the killing would have focused attention on Milwaukee, the site of the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
Or then again, maybe officials and civic leaders would have tried to sweep the killing under the rug, seeking not to give our city another ‘blackeye’ as the national media focused its lens on this ‘great city by a great lake.’
As it was, the Lacy protests remained local, save for activists from throughout the Midwest who traveled to Milwaukee to join our crusade for justice. And they had many opportunities over an extended sojourn given how the Milwaukee district attorney (E. Michael McCann), the police union, and mayor (Henry Meier) used every trick in the book to delay, undermine and desensitize the White community about the incident and police brutality against Black citizens in general.
The Mainstream/Majority/Wh-ite media joined in the conspiracy with questions about Lacy’s mental state and frame of mind. They also indoctrinated residents into believing the protesters were but a small contingency of malcontents, led by radicals— specifically Howard Fuller and Michael McGee.
The crusade, instead, served to crown Fuller and McGee as legitimate national leaders. It also helped pave the way for the former to become the superintendent of the largest public school district in Wisconsin, and the latter to become an elected city official.
Under their leadership—Fuller serving as the researcher and intellectual component, while McGee the revolutionary activist and former Black Panther–the coalition maintained a level of legitimacy and prominence unheard of for the Black community, overshadowing the more traditional civil rights groups like the NAACP and Milwaukee Urban League.
But the massive numbers and leadership were not enough to usurp the combined clout of the county, city hall, and police union, which put pressure on McCann and initiated a recall petition when it appeared he was leaning toward indicting the officers.
Unlike Minneapolis officials, Milwaukee politicians never stood up to the status quo. Nonetheless, the coalition members refused to cave in and exposed before the nation and the world the corrupt and racist nature of Milwaukee politics, criminal justice, and the extent of institutional racism.
Another difference between the Lacy and Floyd murders was the reaction of many, if not most, Whites to their viewing of the nine-minute agonizing public lynching, during which on-lookers emplored the officers to discontinue their assault.
The video confirmed, as similar videos did not, the reality of police injustice and double standards. This wasn’t just a reality show like the ones many Americans watch nightly. This was a civics lesson.
The Lacy demonstrations drew thousands to the new Milwaukee civil rights battleground and were carefully coordinated and sustained by the group calling itself the ‘Coalition for justice for Ernie Lacy.’
An estimated 10,000 participated in one march and rally which, according to some observer at the time…and now–could have sparked a confrontation with police that would’ve surely ended in violence, and probably many deaths.
On that particular day, the 10,000 marchers marched down Wisconsin Avenue with 10 abreast, striding in unison, a few Whites intermingled with African Americans. As they neared 16th Street, Breier (the ‘Bull’ Connor of the north) emerged seemingly out of nowhere, surrounded by hundreds of riot geared officers, and cut through the marchers diagonally and back, pushing and nudging the marchers in what was obviously an attempt to intimidate and incite.
I had stepped from the line to the curb along with the late Journal columnist Greg Stanford to count the marchers for the story I was going to write. Instead, we watched in shock at what Breier obviously attempted to do, praying quietly that marchers would not fall for the trap.
Fortunately, they didn’t, although it took a Herculean effort by many marchers not to respond in kind.
Greg and I talked about it a day later. I mentioned how his story didn’t mention that aspect and vastly undercounted the number of marchers. He revealed, almost embarrassingly, that the copy editors followed an agenda he had no control over.
Obviously, that agenda tainted any respect I had, at the time, for the Majority/Mainstream/White media.
Newspaper reporting has not been an issue with the Floyd murder. In fact, in Minnesota and Milwaukee, the reporting has been basically well balanced.
Except for conservative blogs and talk radio, most of the print and broadcast reporting has provided balanced treatment to the peaceful demonstrations and the looting.
While the Mainstream/Majority/White Media has not used its bully pulpit to explore the root causes that drive racial injustice or lambasted the status quo for its tacit complicity in maintaining the racist status quo, it is a far cry from the role the Journal and Sentinel played in excusing away those involved in the Lacy ‘execution’ 31 years ago.
Some of that can be attributed to the seemingly progressive nature of Minneapolis politicians.
Not by coincidence, the response to the Lacy murder was precisely the opposite of that of Floyd. While Minnesota officials were quick to denounce police misconduct, in Milwaukee, every level of the justice and political system fought prosecution, including the mayor. Apartheid was alive then, as it is today.
That’s part of the reason why Fuller, today na ationally recognized education reform leader, told me Monday that we continue to fight the same battles. Despite the current display of solidarity and nationwide demonstrations, Fuller is not overly optimistic that much will change.
There have been a dozen suspicious controversial police killings of Black men since Lacy in Milwaukee, each generating protests and demonstrations. The city has paid millions to family members for human rights violations, and there is little reason to suspect we’ve seen the end.
In fact, while there is hope that the Floyd ‘lynching’ will spark the creation of a new social movement headed by Millennials, the social conditions that breed Black frustration and anger still exist. There are no meaningful plans on anyone’s table to resolve them.
In fact, while Milwaukee police have shown much restraint in confronting protesters and looters, that has not been the case in many cities.
There have been confrontations and shootings in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles, the home of the first videotaped lynching that was streamed into homes around the globe—Rodney King.
In Atlanta, two Black police officers were suspended, but not fired, for brutality against Black protesters, an indication that it’s not entirely about White and Black, but instead its often about blue and the ‘Hueman’ spectrum.
A violent confrontation between police and protesters in London Monday revealed the international nature of Black frustration and the extent of racial injustice.
Since the Lacy demonstrations, the number and percentage of White protesters continues to grow with each incident; from a small showing of Whites in 1991 following the beating of King to a more significant contingency in Ferguson, MO, after the murder of Michael Brown, and Baltimore following the ‘lynching’ of Freddie Gray.
While the focus for most Americans is on the COVID-19 pandemic, for younger people, including an ever-increasing number of White Millennials, it’s about the pandemic of racism and bigotry.
It’s about Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin. And in Minnesota in 2016, the White community came out to protest the killing of Philando Castile by a Hispanic officer in St. Anthony, MN, still resonates.
In Madison, one year before the shooting of Castile, it was primarily White Millennials protesting the police killing of young Tony Robinson, who the Journal Sentinel described as ‘bi-racial’ after eight years of never using that adjective to describe former Presidentå Barack Obama. That was a planted seed few outside the media understood, but it was directly tied to the local media’s questioning of Lacy’s mental state three decades earlier.
The two killings also sparked controversy over statements made by Black state office holders. The Milwaukee state office holder was denounced for decrying racism, while the Minnesota Black official was applauded for acknowledging the same paradigm.
Part two next week.