George Floyd Victim Of The Modern Lynching By Modern Slave Catchers

 

The George Floyd Mural in Minneapolis painted by Xena Goldman Cadex Herrera and Greta McLain

May 25, 2020, Minneapolis, MN –George Floyd had a past with a criminal record and ongoing problems with addiction. He never tried to deny these facts even as he worked to build a life free from that past. On this day though that life would end at the hands of four police officers even though he was attempting to be compliant and had done nothing violent.

George Floyd had broken the law that day. In Cup Foods, the combined grocery and convenience store on the corner of 38^th and Chicago Streets, he had passed a counterfeit $ 20 bill. The store was part of the Powderhorn Community in Minneapolis. A store, a message center, and a community gathering place. As described by Christopher Martin, the former cashier on duty that day. At the time Martin lived in the apartment above the store. He knew everyone and George Floyd wasn’t a regular.

Floyd bought his cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. Martin recognized it as a counterfeit and said he considered paying for the cigarettes himself but decided not to be involved this way with someone he didn’t know. Accepting the fake bill, Martin called his owners, who called the police.

Floyd was in an SUV across the street from the store when the police arrived and confronted him. Guns drawn they forced him from his vehicle and handcuffed him. They forced Floyd into one of the police cars. Floyd begged them not to because he had claustrophobia. Once in the car he moved across the seat to the other side of the car. This is when his murderer, Officer Derek Chauvin, pulled him out and pinned him with his knee on his neck.

Floyd begged Chauvin to let him roll over and breathe, he didn’t fight he just kept saying he couldn’t breathe. This went on for nine minutes but after the four-minute mark, Floyd had stopped begging for his life.

While Chauvin was killing Floyd the other officers kept other residents at bay and refused to allow any assistance. When the paramedics arrived, they loaded Floyd into the ambulance, he was declared DOA at the hospital, although evidence showed he had died there on the street.

An autopsy was performed the next day, and the Hennepin County Medical Examiner declared the cause of death the restraint by Chauvin. While there was evidence of heart disease and drug use the evidence showed that it was the violent restraint and asphyxiation that killed Floyd. A second autopsy was done for the Floyd family by an independent medical examiner who reported the same.

Protests broke out that night in Minneapolis and on May 26 it broke out in hundreds of cities. By the end of June, backed by Black Lives Matter and other justice and equality organizations the protests became global with protests in 2,000 cities. Between May 26 and August 26 24 million people in the U.S. were part of the protests and vigils for peace. Protests were peaceful but so large many mayors requested the National Guard to assist regular law enforcement creating tension.

By the end of June, curfews had been established in 200 cities. National Guard movement from May 26 to August 27 became the largest movement of troops in U.S. domestic history after the Civil War. At the end of summer, 14,000 arrests and 19 deaths were attributed to civil unrest.

While this was happening, Minneapolis was moving forward toward justice. The four officers had been fired, and Chauvin was charged with 2nd-degree murder and the other three with aiding and abetting 2nd-degree murder. The officers were also investigated by the state and federal civil rights offices.

J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao were convicted of violating Floyd’s Civil Rights and served 3.5 years in Prison. Thomas Lane was the officer least involved and received two years.

Chauvin was charged with unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter and was convicted on all charges; appeals to the Minnesota and United States Supreme Court were denied. He is serving 22 years for the murder of Floyd.

Sadly, even though the murders of George Floyd were captured and convicted and the world summoned outrage at the injustice nothing has changed. Police unions have stopped reform proposals. President Biden increased federal funding to local departments. Fatal actions by police have increased each year since 2020. In the four years since the George Floyd murder 4,400 citizens have been killed, 955 of them Black.

There was an overwhelming response to the murder of George Floyd as opposed to the average lynching of the Jim Crow era, but as with so many other events the systematic racism and White Supremacy built into America was too formidable to dismantle, perhaps even be shaken.

Racist Nativists Force the First Immigration Laws Against the Chinese with the Chinese Exclusion Act

May 6, 1882, Washington D.C. –Today, facing an inevitable override of his previous veto President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act putting hatred and discrimination toward the Chinese and Asians into law.

Many things led to this day and the pressure to change the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868 gave free migration of Chinese residents into the United States and gave China the “Most Favored Nation” trade status. What had seemed a good idea in 1868 had become an untenable situation to White Men who labored across the nation setting down railroads and digging in mines. These White Men had grown to hate the Chinese as much as they hated the free Blacks. Both groups provided cheaper labor and were hated by the White men.

President Arthur’s April 4 VETO of the Chinese Exclusion Act was not out of any benign sense of equity and belief the Chinese were equal to the White man, but one of serious consideration for the reputation of the U.S. on the international stage and the possible economics of passing a law that voided a treaty that had already been renegotiated to limit labor immigration and allowed no women.

“I am persuaded that if Congress can feel that this act violates the faith of the nation as pledged to China,” Arthur told Congress in a prepared statement regarding his veto. “It (Congress) will concur with me in rejecting this particular mode of regulating Chinese immigration and will endeavor to find another which shall meet the expectations of the people of the United States without coming in conflict with the rights of China.”

Arthur was primarily concerned with the economics of having labor in the United States disrupted when the nation was just beginning to shake off the Long Depression of the 1870s. During this global economic contraction, unemployment had often been 8.4 percent in the U.S. which affected White labor far more than the Chinese who worked in worse conditions, which is saying something considering the terrible conditions of labor everywhere, and for less pay.

The idea that Chinese labor was significantly depressing the wages of White men became one of the leading political issues facing the nation after the Economic Panic of 1873 that started the Long Depression in the U.S. California was already enacting anti-Chinese labor laws on the state level well before 1882. However, the 14^th and 15^th Amendments to the Constitution often blocked these laws when litigated.

White-on-Chinese violence increased through the 1870s with the Chinatown Massacre in Los Angeles in 1871 where at least 6 Chinese men were killed. The 1877 San Francisco Riot, the complete destruction of Denver’s Chinatown in 1880, Denver’s frontier Chinese community never recovered. Across the West chapters of the KKK came into existence that targeted the Chinese as did “Anti-Coolie” societies. These bigoted and violent groups were often egged on by the press. Andrew Jackson King, editor of the Los Angeles News called the Chinese a foul blot on the country and a hideous repulsive curse on the country.

Arthur’s economic objectives were progressive for American history just as the Burlingame-Seward Treaty had been with trade and immigration policy. The Exclusion Act negated this and was the first major immigration law in national history. Arthur has taken a modern beating for signing it yet as a political choice it was pragmatic for his own agenda. He had not been the elected president but was the Vice-President who replaced James Garfield just four months into Garfield’s term.

Arthur signed another immigration law that placed a head tax on immigrants who came in through certain ports like Baltimore. It also restricted criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself.". The Chinese Exclusion Act followed the Page Act of 1875 that blocked Chinese women from coming into the country, Before this America had open borders and placed no limits on immigration.

Even with the Chinese Exclusion Act becoming law on May 6^th, 1882, it was far from the end of intense violence against Chinese and Asian immigrants. The 1880s were a bloodier decade with massacres in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and Hells Canyon, Oregon.  These two incidents left over fifty dead. Tacoma, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and many other cities in the American West forced the Chinese out. These incidents were fed primarily by legal discrimination and prejudice, but also economic fears and health concerns. In Colorado and Wyoming, it was believed the Chinese were spreading Tuberculosis and other diseases.

As bad as the Exclusion Act was it led to other even more restrictive immigration acts. As the restrictions were set to end in 1892, the Geary Act was passed extending the Exclusion Act for another 20 years. Then the Immigration Act of 1917 was passed, written by White Supremacists and Racists. It barred all immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands and created literacy tests for Eastern Europeans.

From the early years of expansion in the West from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast Asian Americans, but especially the Chinese faced the same violence and unequal laws as Blacks in the Jim Crow South.

Sources:

https://thomasnastcartoons.com/resources/the-burlingame-treaty-of-1868

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/april-4-1882-veto-chinese-exclusion-act

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-bloody-history-of-anti-asian-violence-in-the-west

https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/the-100-year-old-racist-law-that-broke-americas-immigration-system