Waterboarding? Racist Cops Have Been Torturing Black Suspects for Years
Torture is not a new phenomenon. Just ask the Memphis police officers who beat me forty years ago.
When I read about the increasing acceptance of waterboarding as a form of torture, I vividly recall how in 1968 members of the Memphis Police Department believed I could tell them information about civil rights insurgents arriving to create havoc. Forty years later I still hide my serrated scars.
I was 14 years old and forgot I was a black boy living in racist America and heading for the devil's den of discrimination.
"Boy, where you from?" asked the toothpick-sucking officer in the passenger seat as his partner walked around the car to me. At the station, Tennessee police officers beat me because I was a threat to the status quo of time-honored Uncle Tom behavior.
The physical and verbal abuse heaped upon me caused several broken bones in my body and several dozen stitches on my 14-year-old skull.
clipped from: www.alternet.org