Police brutality against Black people has a long and tragic history in the United States. Dating back to the era of slavery, when slave patrols were established to capture and punish enslaved individuals who attempted to flee, law enforcement has often been weaponized against Black communities.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Black activists faced violent repression at the hands of police officers, with instances such as the brutal beatings of peaceful protesters, including the infamous attack on peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965, known as Bloody Sunday.

In more recent times, high-profile cases of police brutality against Black individuals, such as the killings of Rodney King in 1991, Amadou Diallo in 1999, Sean Bell in 2006, and Breonna Taylor in 2020, have sparked nationwide outrage and calls for reform within law enforcement agencies.

The Black Lives Matter movement, which gained prominence in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, has been instrumental in bringing attention to issues of police brutality and advocating for systemic change to address racial bias and violence within policing.

Police brutality continues to be a pervasive issue in Black history, highlighting the ongoing struggle for justice, accountability, and equal treatment under the law for Black Americans.