Black '1870' pins to be worn by Congress members for State of the Union have deep significance
As President Biden approaches the lectern for Tuesday’s State of the Union speech to address the country’s top issues before Congress, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Democrats will be making a bold statement of their own — albeit a silent one.
Many of them will be wearing black pins with the number “1870” on them, which marks the year of the first known police killing of an unarmed and free Black person that occurred in the United States. The pins are a call for action on reforming the institution of policing that has killed thousands of Black people in the 153 years since.
“I’m tired of moments of silence. I’m tired of periods of mourning,” New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat who came up with the idea to create the pins, told Yahoo News. “I wanted to highlight that police killings of unarmed Black citizens have been in the news since 1870, and yet significant action has yet to be taken.”
On March 31, 1870, 26-year-old Henry Truman, a Black man, was shot and killed by Philadelphia Officer John Whiteside after being accused of shoplifting from a grocery store.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/black-1870-pins-to-be-worn-by-congress-members-for-state-of-the-union-have-deep-significance-223538448.html
