Keywords
African-Americans, Police, Violence, Hughes, McKay, Black Lives Matter
Abstract
In the year 2023, a number of Blacks in the United States died at the hands of the police who resorted to heavy-hand arrests. This sparked a movement of protest called “Black Lives Matter”, which has been decrying this form of violence against African-Americans. Since the death of George Floyd in 2020, it has been one of the most powerful movements for the defense of Black rights. It all came to a climax on May 25, the day one which, during his arrest, George Floyd, an African-American, died of suffocation. Yet if we revisit the American history, we shall easy observe that the law enforcement agents were often used to exert violence and abuses against the Blacks, the aim being to torpedo their efforts to integrate into the mainstream society and thrive economically. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the police or State-sponsored brutality have existed since the abolition of the slavery in the US. The denunciation of such violence is one of the main themes of the poetry of Hughes and McKay to a lesser extent.
