It's been a week since George Floyd's death in police custody sparked worldwide protests against systemic racism, specifically within law enforcement and against black men. But the legacy of racist policing stems back much, much further, The New York Times Magazine's Nikole Hannah-Jones explained to CBS News on Tuesday.
As Hannah-Jones, creator of the Times' 1619 project, noted, "modern policing," particularly in the south and parts of the northeast, "actually evolved out of the slave patrols." They "deputized white Americans to police enslaved communities, to ensure slaves were only in the places they were allowed, to put down slave insurrections," and gave them practically unlimited power to stop, question, and even "execute enslaved people," Hannah-Jones continued.
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