How To Get Away With Murder: Be White.

Even though OJ Simpson was acquitted for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown and her friend, Ron Goldman, in 1995 the murders continue to haunt his public image some 20+ years later. Countless TV shows, documentaries, news broadcasts, and think pieces speculate on: "How OJ Got Away With Murder". Even though Double Jeopardy applies and "he probably did it" OJ isn't the first person to "get away with murder" and live a life relatively free of punishment:

White People.

Don't roll your eyes at me and think: "not another white people are evil" post. White people (some not all) have been murdering, raping, lynching, lying, trolling, torturing, beating, stabbing, whipping, bombing, sodomizing, shooting, and the latest--calling the cops on black people FOR CENTURIES. It should come to no surprise that when nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced Congress from 1882 to 1968, only three passed the House. Between 1890 and 1952 seven presidents asked Congress to pass a federal law. Yet not one bill was approved by the Senate because of the powerful opposition of  southern Democrats (read: "white people"). To this day lynching is not considered a hate crime and no federal law exists to punish the perpetrators. 

From the 1900s till the Civil Rights Movement (lets be honest "till NOW") Racist policies, racist attitudes and socially accepted forms of Jim Crow laws prevent(ed) black people from being civically engaged in their communities. Voting Poll Taxes, Literacy Voting registration tests, intimation tactics and a ban on Black jurors all lead up to the phenomenon I call: "White People Getting Away With Murder". Because of the racial attitudes of the majority of white Americans in the 1900s, thousands, (maybe a cool million) of white criminals got away with crimes like: 

• The Murder of Emmett Till
• The Rape of Recy Taylor
• The Lynching of Mary Turner
• The Beating of Fannie Lou Hamer
• The Aborting of Mary Turner's Fetus
• The Torture of SNCC field secretary, Don Harris
• The Sodomization of Abner Louima
• The Shooting of Amadou Diallo 
• The False 911 Gun Reporting of John Crawford III
• The Choking of Eric Garner
• The False Imprisonment of Kalief Browder
• The ___________ of ________________

                (Insert Crime)           (Black Person)

I could go on and on--but if your attention span is anything like mine, I'll digress.
Do you know any of the names of the perpetrators above? 

Why not? 

Why is Simpson's name a household topic but men like, Sheriff Earle Partridge who, "lifted up Fannie Lou Hamer's skirt above her head and forced two prisoners to beat her till they got tired." live in relative obscurity? 

Why are white women like Carolyn Bryant Donham, living a quiet, undisturbed life after falsely accusing Emmett Till of whistling at her--ultimately causing his demise?

THAT SHIT STOPS TODAY. 

By the power invested in my fingertips, google.com, Ancestry Database, ProQuest newspaper archives and a cushy museum job at NMAAHC, I colloquially dub this series: "WHITE PEOPLE GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER" #WPGAWM

Stay tuned for the next Topic 

WPGAWM: The Beating of Fannie Lou Hamer