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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 24. Inequality of Justice - 2. Relative Equality in the North
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Chapter 24. Inequality of Justice 527
the general impression that such differential treatment of witnesses is
rather the exception than the rule, and that it will practically never happen
to a Negro plaintiff or defendant who is assisted by good counsel.®
A more serious matter is the treatment of Negroes by the police. In most
Northern communities Negroes are more likely than whites to be arrested
under any suspicious circumstances. They are more likely to be accorded dis-
courteous or brutal treatment at the hands of the police than are whites.
The rate of killing of Negroes by the police is high in many Northern
cities, particularly in Detroit.*^ Negroes have a seriously high criminality
record,*^ and the average white policeman is inclined to increase it even more
in his imagination. The Negroes are, however, not the only sufferers, even
if they, as usual, reap more than their fair share. Complaints about indis-
criminate arrests and police brutality are raised also by other economically
disadvantaged and culturally submerged groups in the Northern cities.
The attitudes of the police will sometimes be found among the most
important Items considered in local Negro politics in the North. Usually
there is much less complaint about not getting a fair trial before the courts.
Another form of discrimination In the North against Negroes is in the
market for houses and apartments j
whites try to keep Negroes out of white
neighborhoods by restrictive covenants. The legality of these covenants Is
open to dispute, but in so far as the local courts uphold them, the dis-
crimination is in the legal principle, not in the individual cases brought to
court.® In some Northern cities—as, for instance, Detroit—I have heard
complaints that the police will sometimes try to restrict Negroes to the
Negro districts, particularly at night. There have been bombings against
Negroes who tried to invade white territory and even race riots, particularly
in the wake of the sudden migration of great masses of rural Negroes
from the South during and immediately after the First World War.®
The police have not always been strictly impartial during such Incidents.’’^
But the courts have usually not shielded the white transgressors afterwards
in the way which has become a pattern in the South.
Vigilantism occasionally occurs in the North. The Western frontier
formerly saw much of it, but manifestations of it are rare now. During the
1920^8 the Ku Klux Klan operated in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
other Northern states almost as much as it did in the South. Immigrant
sections of a few Northern cities occasionally witness such activities (e.g.,
the ^^Black Hand” society in Italian areas and the Tong wars in Chinese
sections). Occasionally vigilantism of the Southern type will still occur in
the North:
• See Chapter 27, Section 5.
^See Chapter 44, Section a.
*See Chapter 29, Section 4.
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