Police brutality against Black individuals has been a long-standing issue throughout U.S. history. One of the earliest forms of this brutality can be traced back to the era of slavery, where enslaved individuals were often subjected to violent and oppressive treatment by slave patrols, which later evolved into modern policing institutions.

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, peaceful Black activists and demonstrators were met with extreme violence and brutality from law enforcement officers, most famously seen in incidents such as the attack on peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the Selma to Montgomery marches.

More recently, high-profile cases of police brutality against Black individuals, such as the deaths of Rodney King, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others, have sparked widespread outrage and calls for reform of policing practices in the United States.

These incidents have highlighted the systemic issues of racism and discrimination within law enforcement agencies and have led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which aims to address and combat police brutality and racial injustice in the criminal justice system. Efforts to reform policing and increase accountability for officers involved in acts of brutality continue to be ongoing battles in the fight for racial equality and justice in America.