PHILADELPHIA, Penn.— State’s Attorney of Baltimore, Md. Marilyn Mosby received uproarious applause from attendees at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People annual convention Sunday when she deemed the criminal justice system unfair to minority voting communities. Mosby made no mention of Freddie Gray, the young black man who died in Baltimore while in police custody in April. The case made Mosby a national figure among black civil rights activists.
Mosby explained to the audience that she did not want to pass on the “plight of” communities of color to future generations, saying, “You see, from slavery to Jim Crow to the industrial prison complex, there comes a point when we must say ‘enough is enough.’”
Mosby cited statistics of incarceration rates between black and whites, noting that both black men and black women are imprisoned at a disproportionately higher rate than their white counterparts. The same, she said, was true for unemployment numbers.
“In the 42 years since the bureau of labor statistics started tracking on employment data by race black unemployment has been on average 66% higher than that of whites. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, in 2014, African-American women had the highest unemployment rate among all women,” she said.
The bottom line? Mosby concluded that black incarceration rates lead to minority voter disenfranchisement. “As recently as 2009, she said, 11 states with felony disenfranchisement policies effectively reduced the African-American voting population by more than 10 percent.”
“Ladies as mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and friends we must ensure that our young black boys know that they are not a statistic. They are not thugs and that they are so much more intelligent, talented, and beautiful than what the media portrays them as,” she said, stressing the importance of “referring to our fathers, our future husbands, our brothers and sons” as “kings and that they are more powerful united than they are divided.”
President Barack Obama caught heat from black lawmakers when he referred to Baltimore rioters as “thugs” following chaos in May that ensued after the death of Gray.
Mosby described herself and other women of color in positions of importance throughout American history as “warrior women,” pointing out that she felt she had to use her self-confidence “in the pursuit of justice and equality, even in the face of race and gender disparities” to “deflect all the negativity of ages of sexism and racism.”
“And ultimately [I had to] decide that as a wife–a mother raising two little girls in the heart of West Baltimore–a woman and a former prosecutor with six years prosecutorial experience and an overall 80% conviction rate, that I not only possess the vision, but I possess the foresight to change and reform the criminal justice system.”
She went on, “With my passionate mind, I decided my desire to change a criminal justice system–a system that is historically and disproportionately affecting so many in the communities of color far outweighs the forces in skepticism.”
Mosby made these remarks at a women’s luncheon Sunday to a packed room of NAACP supporters. Her husband, Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby was also in attendance.
Mosby’s speech comes on the heels of the termination of Anthony Batts, Baltimore’s former commissioner, by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Additionally, lawyers representing the six officers charged in the arrest and death of Gray say Mosby has not handed over evidence from her office’s independent investigation of the Gray incident.
Each officer has pled not guilty to charges that include involuntary manslaughter, second degree depraved heart murder, and second-degree assault.