Police Discrimination, Miscarriages of Justice, and Little Richard

When Little Richard recently died, I decided to listen to Here’s Little Richard!, his ground-breaking 1957 LP. One of my favorite tracks in a hit-filled record is the little-known track “Oh Why?”

It is very different from the rest of the catalogue. Slower, quieter – almost meditative. The lyrics, not written by Richard, are far more sober than the other high-energy songs:

I dreamed I was arrested
Charged with a crime
Forgot to plead innocent
Because darling, you're not mine

Oh why?
Why should it happen to me?
Well, I'm fine with it
Have mercy on me

The policeman said maybe
The judge he can agree
The jury keep on guessing
But the DA says it's me

The lawyer said, plead guilty
And try to cop a plea
But why should I try plead guilty
When you don't belongs to me?

… this is not a love song. This is a song about black Americans being caught in a justice system that doesn’t treat them fairly. It’s part of a long history, up to the present – a history I’ve long been interested in tracing, and which has been humming, in the back of my mind, for many years.

*     *     *

A decade before “Oh Why?” a song was released that is a rare antecedent to Little Richard’s message of injustice, and, according to Chuck Berry, might have been the first rock and roll song. Louis Jordan’s 1949 track “Saturday Night Fish Fry” is a fun song, but the lyrics, telling of a couple of musicians taking part in a black house party, take a turn, reflecting the same theme of racial injustice:

Now, we figured this was a good place to play,
'Cause the party was already underway;
But all of a sudden the lights went low,
And everybody made straight for the front door,
Man, I was so scared I didn't know where to go,
I stood right there, then I fell on the floor!

Now, the women was screamin' and jumpin' and yellin',
The bottles was flyin' and the fish was smellin';
And way up above all the noise they made,
Somebody hollered, "Better get out of here; this is a raid!"
Now, I didn't know we was breakin' the law,
But somebody reached up and hit me on the jaw,
They had us blocked off from the front and the back,
And they was puttin' 'em in the wagon like potatoes in a sack.

I knew I could get away if I had a chance,
But I was shakin' like I had the St. Vitus dance,
Now, I tried to crawl under a bathtub,
When the policeman said, "Where you goin' there, bub?"
Now, they got us out of there like a house on fire,
Put us all in that Black Maria,
Now, they might have missed a pitiful few,
But they got both me and my buddy, too!

We headed for jail in a dazed condition,
They booked each one of us on suspicion;
Now my chick came down and went for my bail,
And finally got me out of that rotten jail;
Now, if you ever want to get a fist in your eye,
Just mention a Saturday night fish fry!

Lots of clear discrimination in there. These songs, and these themes, were, therefore, part of the very birth of rock and roll, and the themes continued into the rock and R&B era. All through the 1960s there were a variety of great Civil Rights anthems, sometimes dealing with generalized discrimination and marginalization, and sometimes optimistic: from Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” in 1964 to James Brown’s 1968 “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”. That said, these Civil Rights tracks usually didn’t address the justice system or policing. However, entering the 1970s, Marvin Gaye closed his landmark album What’s Going On with the track “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” which returned decidedly to lyrics of discrimination:

Oh, make me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands
Yea, it makes me wanna holler
And throw up both my hands

Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God know where we're heading
Oh, make me wanna holler
They don't understand

That line of “trigger happy policing” is a notably violent shift from the previous songs, and during the next two decades this concern over police violence would grow, and continue to find expression in music. The same year as Gaye’s song, Gil Scott-Heron addresses this violence as well on the classic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” from his album Pieces of a Man:

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
Brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
Brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
Run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkins strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving
For just the proper occasion

During the 1970s we also see the older theme of miscarriage of justice return with Stevie Wonder, in his 1973 track “Living for the City”, during a long spoken-word section, which, using sound effects, tracks a man’s arrival to New York through his immediate arrest, trial, and jail sentence:

Bus for New York City!
Hey, bus driver! I'm getting on that, hold it
Thanks a lot
Wow, New York, just like I pictured it
Skyscrapers and everything
Hey hey brother, hey come here slick
Hey you look, you look hip man
Hey you wanna make yourself five bucks man
You look hip
Run this across the street for me right quick
Okay, run this across the street for me
What? Huh? I didn’t know! What?
Gimme your hands up you punk!
I’m just going across the street
Put that leg up, shut your mouth
Hell no, what did I do?
Okay, turn around, turn around
Put your hands behind your back, let’s go, let’s go

A jury of your peers having found you guilty, ten years
What?
Come on, come on, get in that cell nigga
God, lord

A decade after the Civil Rights Act, clearly, there was still a lack of racial criminal justice. The prejudice of white America against black America was being given a voice by some of the greatest musicians of the decade.

Returning to the abuses of police, in 1981 the typically upbeat Rick James included “Mr. Policeman” on his album Street Songs:

Hey Mr. Policeman
I've seen you in my neighborhood
You look to me up to no good
I've seen you with your gun in your hand
Hey Mr. Policeman
I saw you shoot my good friend down
He was just havin' fun
Checkin' out a one & one
It's a shame and disgrace
Everytime you show your face
Somebody dies man
La la la la la la la la la

Hey Mr. Policeman
Why don't you leave the boys alone
Why don't you just roll your own
And call me on the telephone
Hey Mr. Policeman
I see you walkin' on your beat
Searchin' strangers on the street
Especially the whores you meet
It's a shame such a disgrace
Everytime you show your face
Somebody dies man
Somebody dies

This pivot back towards police misconduct was not unique. Famously, by the end of the decade in 1988, N.W.A. released “Fuck Tha Police” which shocked much of white America. The lyrics were not subtle:

Fuck the police comin' straight from the underground
A young nigga got it bad 'cause I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority
Fuck that shit, 'cause I ain't the one
For a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun
To be beatin' on, and thrown in jail
We can go toe to toe in the middle of a cell
Fuckin' with me 'cause I'm a teenager
With a little bit of gold and a pager
Searchin' my car, lookin' for the product
Thinkin' every nigga is sellin' narcotics

This song brought the anger and injustice of racist policing to national attention (the FBI even responded), even though, as we’ve seen, it had never disappeared. Two years before “Fuck Tha Police” caught people's attention, crack had been labeled more dangerous than cocaine – a law that disproportionately affected black Americans.  Soon after, in 1992, the Rodney King riots took place, as a response to police brutality. By 1994 the infamous Crime Bill was passed, again disproportionately affecting black Americans, and by 2002 tens of thousands of New Yorkers, usually black, were being stopped and frisked.

In this context, a lot of hip hop artists, in the gangsta-influenced decade of roughly 1988-1998, had similar lyrics and themes to NWA. The popularity of gangsta-inspired songs which dealt explicitly with illegal behaviors, such as drug dealing, assault, and drive-bys, dominated hip hop for years, with lots of lyrical content that was anti-cop. Public Enemy was a rare exception during this era for creating an anti-cop song that dealt with the earlier themes of injustice seen in Marvin Gaye and Rick James, in 1990’s “911 is a Joke”:

Now I dialed 911 a long time ago
Don't you see how late they're reacting
They only come and they come when they wanna
So get the morgue truck and embalm the goner
They don't care cause they stay paid anyway
They treat you like an ace they can't be betrayed
A no-use number with no-use people
If your life is on the line then you're dead today
Latecomers with the late coming stretcher
That's a body bag in disguise y'all, I'll betcha
I call 'em body snatchers cause they come to fetch ya
With an autopsy ambulance just to dissect ya
They are the kings cause they swing amputation
Lose your arms, your legs to them it's compilation
I can prove it to you watch the rotation
It all adds up to a fucked up situation

But songs against the police lose some sympathy when, for the most part, they were packaged with songs glorifying violence like drive-bys and assassinations. Still, the issue of police violence against innocent black victims was present during these years, and was expressed by Wyclef Jean in his song “Diallo”, which dealt with the shooting of an unarmed black immigrant, Amadou Diallo in 1999 – when police shot him 41 times:

Diallo, Diallo - similar to Steven Biko
Diallo, Diallo - you tell me that the murder was an error
Diallo, Diallo - but every man will be judged
Diallo, Diallo - according to his words

You know what?
You told me - that I wouldn't understand man
Tonight some cry - in the streets a burial
Survival of the fittest - only the strong will survive
How can I survive - with forty-one shots by my side?

You guys are murderers
in the middle of the night
Killin innocent people
is that your appetite? Ohhh

You said he reached sir
but he didn't have no piece sir
But now he rest in peace sir
in the belly of the beast sir

After 2000 or so hip hop moved away from East coast / West coast gangsta feud, and lyrics began to revert back to the general theme of harassment seen in the much-earlier songs of Little Richard and Louis Jordan. Most notably Jay Z, in 2004, released “99 Problems” which deals in part with harassment faced due to ‘driving while black’, which has been shown statistically to be a form of racial discrimination on our highways:

The year is '94, in my trunk is raw
In my rearview mirror is the motherfuckin' law
Got two choices, y'all: pull over the car or
Bounce on the devil, put the pedal to the floor
And I ain't tryin' to see no highway chase with Jake
Plus I got a few dollars, I can fight the case
So I pull over to the side of the road
I heard, "Son, do you know why I'm stopping you for?"
'Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low?
Do I look like a mind reader, sir? I don't know
Am I under arrest or should I guess some more?
"Well, you was doing 55 in a 54
License and registration and step out of the car
Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are"
I ain't steppin' out of shit, all my paper's legit
"Well, do you mind if I look around the car a little bit?"
Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back
And I know my rights, so you gon' need a warrant for that
"Aren't you sharp as a tack?
You some type of lawyer or something?
Somebody important or something?"
Well, I ain't passed the bar, but I know a little bit
Enough that you won't illegally search my shit
"Well, we'll see how smart you are when the K9 come!"
I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one

The song was a critical and commercial hit, and once again brought on the scrutiny of white America. More recently, another decade-defining song comes from Kendrick Lamar, who released “Alright” in 2015, with this now-well-known lyric:

And we hate Popo, wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I'm at the preacher's door
My knees gettin' weak and my gun might blow but we gon' be alright

This re-enflamed a backlash the likes of which hadn’t been seen since NWA, due again to the context of the time when released and the increasingly visible discrepancy between the lives of white and black Americans. “Alright” debuted just as Black Lives Matter was surging – eight months after Eric Garner was killed by police. It was a song that captured a new moment in America. In an Oscar-winning track released shortly before Lamar's, in 2014, Common chose to explicitly link the new Black Lives Matter movement to the long history of Civil Rights, in his song “Glory” with John Legend:

Hands to the Heavens, no man, no weapon
Formed against, yes glory is destined
Every day women and men become legends
Sins that go against our skin become blessings
The movement is a rhythm to us
Freedom is like religion to us
Justice is juxtapositionin' us
Justice for all just ain't specific enough
One son died, his spirit is revisitin' us
Truant livin' livin' in us, resistance is us
That's why Rosa sat on the bus
That's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up
When it go down we woman and man up
They say, "Stay down", and we stand up
Shots, we on the ground, the camera panned up
King pointed to the mountain top and we ran up

The focus here is on Ferguson, Missouri, which boiled over when Michael Brown was killed by a police officer – one of the Black Lives Matter catalysts. As we can see, songs of police violence and a discriminatory justice system have, by now, become part of the American musical heritage, folded in with the Civil Rights anthems, protest tracks, and songs about discrimination against black Americans in general.

*     *     *

Generalized songs of discrimination, of course, long predate the rock and roll boom of the 1950s – Louis Armstrong often recorded “Black & Blue” which was originally a Fats Waller song from the 1920s, and Billie Holiday is famous for describing a lynching in 1939’s “Strange Fruit”. But, it was with the birth of rock and roll, and artists like Jordan and Little Richard, that a new type of song about discrimination in the justice system began, which eventually evolved into songs explicitly dealing with police brutality. And so, in light of Richard’s death, it’s worth remembering that a whole legacy of songs, from Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, to NWA and Public Enemy, to Jay Z and Kendrick Lamar, can trace their history back to Richard’s ground-breaking work. In brief, there was so much more to him than his delightful “Good Golly Miss Molly!” and “Tutti Frutti” – and we should honor and celebrate that contribution and legacy as well.

Little Richard, 1932-2020.