"White Violence and Collective

Memory: Encountering Racism in

Memphis, Past and Present."
Anthony C. Siracusa
Vanderbilt University
Reckoning with the Past
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but
nothing can be changed until it is faced. James
Baldwin

What Im talking about is more than recompense

for past injusticesmore than a handout, a
payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What Im
talking about is a national reckoning that would
lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean
the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July
while denying the facts of our heritage.
Reparations would mean the end of yelling
patriotism while waving a Confederate flag.
Reparations would mean a revolution of the
American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-
Violence in Historical
Perspective
Violence in Historical
Perspective
The Whipping Machine
The Whipping Machine
The Massacre at Fort Pillow
The Memphis Massacre
Lynching in Memphis
Mapping Lynching
Ida B. Wells
The Lynching at the Curve
Ell Persons
Memphis Infant Mortality
Robert R. Church, Jr. House
Burned
Dying in the City of the
Blues
Larry Payne and the
Sanitation Strike
Elton Hayes
Crack Cocaine and the Rise of
Mandatory Minimums
Between 1982 and 1996, drug law violation sentences got longer
and the African American prison population doubled. Today,
according to the American Civil Liberties Union, 1 in 3 black men
will have contact with the criminal justice system and
approximately 1.4 million black men 13% of all adult African
American males are disfranchised because of felony drug
convictions and 1 in 14 black children has a parent in prison.
In 2006, blacks constituted 82% of those sentenced under
federal crack cocaine laws while whites constituted only 8.8%
despite the fact that more than 66% of people who use crack
cocaine are white. In addition, in 2005 racial minorities
comprised 85% of those receiving mandatory minimum
sentences for powder cocaine. The U.S. Sentencing Commission
(USSC) has found that, sentences appear to be harsher and
more severe for racial minorities than others as a result of this
law. The current penalty structure results in a perception of
unfairness and inconsistency.
Infant Mortality in Memphis
The New Jim Crow
Darrius Stewart
Where Do We Go From Here?