The Black Activists Who Helped Launch the Drug War

Over the last few years, as mainstream concern with the war on drugs and mass incarceration has grown, a relatively straightforward narrative has taken hold: White people, engaged in a backlash against the advances of the civil-rights era, imposed the carceral state on black people. That’s the story told by Michelle Alexander in her seminal book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, as well as by any number of other academics and public intellectuals.

To many people, New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws epitomize this sad trajectory like no other piece of legislation. Passed in 1973, they imposed harsh penalties on those convicted of drug-related offenses, including mandatory life sentences for the sale of many hard drugs and harsh sentences for possessions of small quantities. Between their enactment and 2009 repeal, they were responsible for a massive wave of incarceration over minor drug convictions — one that ...

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