Black Lives Matter DC

03/15/2026

Right now is NOTthe time to be uninformed about our rights.

Join us for Street Law 101: Know Your Rights, a participatory training grounded in D.C. and the experiences of Black communities in this city.

We’ll break down:

• What the law says our rights are
• What actually happens in real life
• How policing operates as a system in D.C.
• The many law enforcement agencies operating here, from MPD to federal agencies like ICE
• Practical strategies for navigating police encounters

Know Your Rights education is a key part of building a People’s Self-Defense Network where communities share knowledge, protect one another, and strengthen our collective response to state violence.

📅 Wednesday, March 18

⏰ 7–9 PM (Virtual)

Register:
https://bit.ly/street_law_march

Share widely. Bring a friend.

02/28/2026

02/25/2026

02/18/2026

Every time.

Every time one of us is killed, the story comes out fast.
“He reached.”
“He fled.”
“He had a weapon.”
“The officer feared for their life.”

It’s almost verbatim. Copy. Paste. Repeat.

And too many people accept it before loved ones are even buried.

DC residents and everyone watching nationally we MUST to do better.

Stop automatically treating the police version of events as truth. It isn’t neutral. It’s an institution protecting itself. It’s a system managing liability. It’s a script we’ve heard over and over again when they kill one of us.

Pause.
Question it.
Listen to the family.
Trust our people.

Because once the narrative hardens, it becomes the justification. And once it becomes the justification, the killing becomes “understandable.” And once it becomes understandable, it becomes normal.

We cannot normalize this.

If you say Black lives matter, that means committing to skepticism when the state explains why it took one. It means not reposting police press releases like they’re verified truth. It means asking harder questions. It means standing with families instead of institutions.

Honor the people this system has killed by refusing to help rewrite their deaths into something acceptable. Honor them by fighting forward.

Now do more than read this.

Share it. Amplify it. Post the names. Tell the stories. Expose the lies. Flood timelines with the truth about the Black people being killed by cops in DC.

Do not let them disappear quietly.

02/14/2026

Julian should still be here.

02/13/2026

In the early morning hours of June 26, 1938, Wallace McKnight, a 33-year-old night watchman was walking home in Washington, D.C., carrying groceries from his workplace when Officer John E. Sobolewski stopped and questioned him. According to press accounts, Sobolewski opened fire after McKnight ran, shooting him in the back; McKnight continued running, the officer commandeered a passing car, caught up with him, and shot again. McKnight died the next day. The groceries included a chicken, butter, eggs, bacon, and fruit food from his job.

In mid-July a grand jury indicted Sobolewski for manslaughter, believed to be the first time a white police officer in Washington, D.C. was charged in the death of a Black person. An all-white jury acquitted him, and he was restored to duty. McKnight’s killing was one of dozens of police shootings of Black people that helped spur broader community resistance to brutality in the city.

The community did not accept this quietly. Civil rights groups including the NAACP and the National Negro Congress joined with other local organizers to press for accountability. The brutality campaign in Washington, D.C., led by the local National Negro Congress and allied groups, built a broad-based coalition from 1936 to 1941 that brought new forms of mass protest into the civil rights struggle, winning a decline in police shootings and early institutional reforms.

On July 8, 1938, more than 2,000 people gathered at 9th and Rhode Island Avenue NW. In a powerful act of collective witness and defiance, children crowded the car carrying Mollie McKnight, Wallace’s widow, walking beside her in the streets. Their presence sent a clear message: this violence was not hidden, and an entire community, including its youngest members ,stood in protest.

1938 wasn’t before resistance.
It wasn’t before mobilization.
It wasn’t before memory.

Black Washingtonians named the violence, took to the streets, and demanded accountability long before modern movements made national headlines.

We have always organized.
We have always resisted.
We have always remembered.


”

02/04/2026

Black people in D.C. have been organizing against police brutality and police murder for well over a century.

October 17, 1936, the Afro newspaper published a list of people killed by MPD and reported that 5 Black people were being killed by police every year in D.C.

What made the moment explosive wasn’t only the number.

It was the pattern.

Journalist Adam Lapin documented 40 Black people killed by D.C. police since 1925, noting that every cop was cleared. Most of the victims were young, many under 21. All 40 cases were similar:

• A Black person is stopped or arrested
• Police claim “self-defense”
• Witnesses contradict police
• No weapon is found
• The officer is cleared anyway

December 9, 1933, MPD cop Wallace M. Suthard shot Robert Lewis, a Black worker, in the abdomen after arresting him on suspicion of burglary. Suthard claimed Lewis reached for a gun.

➡️ No gun was found.

That same script appeared again in 1936, with the killing of Leonard (Lawrence) Basey.
Basey was walking back to his segregated CCC camp with coworkers unarmed, laughing, existing, when officer Vivian H. Landrum arrested the group for “noise.” When Basey questioned the arrest, Landrum threatened him and then shot him in the abdomen. Basey later died.

Landrum had previously shot at and beaten CCC workers, yet he was still allowed to patrol, still allowed to kill.

Nothing has changed.

MPD cop Juwan Jefferson murdered Eric Carter on September 16, 2019, and then De’Andre Johnson on October 18, 2021.

This is not coincidence.
This is not “bad apples.”
This is design.



“Shootings by D.C. Police Spark Fight Against Brutality (1936–41)” — Washington Area Spark
https://washingtonareaspark.com/2013/04/20/shootings-by-dc-police-spark-fight-against-brutality-1936-41/amp/

02/03/2026

Resistance didn’t begin with body cams.

Decades before hashtags and cell phones, Black people in D.C. were already organizing against police terror.

In the 1930s, the DC chapter of the National Negro Congress held a mass meeting at Metropolitan Baptist Church to confront what they named plainly: police brutality, what many called “urban lynching.”

This wasn’t symbolic. It was strategic.

The NNC launched a sustained campaign demanding:

• A formal investigation into DC police

• Public accountability for officers’ unnecessary and unlawful use of force

• An end to routine beatings, harassment, and killings of Black residents

• Protection for Black workers, youth, and organizers targeted by police

They gathered testimony.
They mobilized the community.
They pressured city officials.
They named police violence as state violence, not “isolated incidents.”

Churches became organizing hubs.
Mass meetings became sites of political education.

Black D.C. residents made it clear: policing was a racial justice issue.

This is the lineage.

From the NNC to today’s organizers, Black people in D.C. have always resisted the police state, collectively, publicly, and unapologetically.

Black History Month in D.C. is about ongoing resistance.

✊🏾 We didn’t start fighting back. We never stopped.

02/02/2026

Black History Month in D.C. isn’t just about the past, it’s about resistance that never stopped.

This month, we’re lifting up the ongoing resistance of Black people in D.C. to the police state, police terror, and state violence, starting with Red Summer (1919) when Black folks here refused to be terrorized.

In the summer after WWI, more than 23 anti-Black riots erupted across the country. In D.C., white mobs including sailors, soldiers, and marines, roamed the city attacking Black people, dragging folks off streetcars, and destroying Black businesses. Police largely stood by.

And Black people fought back.

Black World War I veterans, newly returned from fighting abroad, armed themselves and defended their communities. Neighbors kept watch from rooftops. Sharpshooters took positions atop buildings like the Howard Theatre. Defensive lines were built around Black neighborhoods near Howard University and LeDroit Park to protect residents.

The city became militarized,armed soldiers stopped and questioned Black residents, often violently. Twenty-two-year-old Randall Neal was among the first killed.

Despite being targeted, Black resistance was organized, strategic, and effective. Between dozens of people were killed and more than 150 injured, and unlike many so-called “riots” of that era, white casualties were higher, precisely because Black people defended themselves.

Federal troops were eventually called in, not to protect Black life, but after days of unchecked white violence. The unrest only fully subsided after a heavy summer rainstorm.

This is D.C. history.
This is Black history.
This is resistance.

And it didn’t end in 1919.

All month long, we’ll be connecting these stories to the present, because the same systems of policing, surveillance, and violence still shape Black life in this city today.

We remember. We resist. We defend each other.
✊🏾🖤

01/28/2026

Raids. Masked agents. Jump-out squads. Detention. Deportation. Death. These are the Bodysnatchers and their violent actions.

In a few hours, BAJI’S ED, Nana Gyamfi will unveil STOP Taking Our People and Break the ICE Machine. She will be joined by others who are committed to this fight, including Adaku Onyeka-Crawford (Advancement Project), Paige Ingram (Movement for Black Lives) and Lara Kiswan (Arab Resource & Organizing Center).



https://bit.ly/WebinarSTOPTakingOurPeople