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On May 13, , police fired tear gas , water cannons, and 10, rounds of ammunition into Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. Then, from a helicopter, officers dropped onto the building a satchel bomb, the kind used in World War II and Vietnam. Inside the home were seven adults and six children, members of the eco-minded black liberation group, MOVE. Only two people survived. One of the five children who burned was year-old Little Phil Africa.

After the bombing, a fire broke out that claimed 61 surrounding buildings and left people homeless in the middle-class black neighborhood. From the s to the s, chemical companies made polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in Anniston, Alabama. The compounds were used as lubricants and insulators in electrical machinery. They also cause cancer and damage brain structures in humans, and were banned in the U. Within the majority black city, black neighborhoods were hardest hit by the pollutants.

Even young people contend with cancer and other illnesses—the brother of one local activist died of lung and brain cancer at just In , residents won a lawsuit against Monsanto worth hundreds of millions, but each of the more than 18, complainants only received a few thousand. Some of the funds created a clinic to treat the still-suffering Anniston residents. It ran out of money and folded in They murdered more than black residents , and burned homes, shops, and local institutions ranging from schools to movie theaters.

Entire city blocks evaporated, as well as the contemporary equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in black property and wealth. Nine thousand out of a total of 11, Greenwood residents were left homeless. In November , a white supremacist mob stormed the majority black and racially integrated city of Wilmington, North Carolina, and burned the office of a black newspaper.

They marauded through the streets, killing as many as black residents. The mayhem was all part of a carefully planned effort to overthrow the local government, which included black aldermen and other officials and civil servants.

It still stands as the only successful coup in American history. Black residents retreated into swamps and woods on the outskirts of town to escape the white mob. Around 2, left for good, leaving the city majority white. The Upper Manhattan community included an economic mix of people who lived in everything from shanties to two-story homes. They owned livestock, and were shielded from the racism in more developed parts of the city.

Some black people owned property, which afforded them the right to vote: 10 of the eligible black voters in the entire state in were residents of Seneca Village. By , the community was gone, its land acquired through eminent domain to create Central Park. These are anecdotes of literal, physical destruction of black communities, but while the carnage can be as unmistakable as bombs falling from the sky, it more often takes the form of slower-burning ravages wrought by economic starvation, over policing, educational deprivation, and mass incarceration.

American history is littered with the destruction of black communities. And yet they are accused of being black people destroying their own communities, just as black people were condemned for Watts in , Chicago and other cities after Dr. Aside from the horrifying way that white America seems to be more scandalized by the destruction of stores and police stations than the destruction of lives, the insincerity of this newfound concern for black neighborhoods is obvious.

It only ever seems to be activated when a black person picks up a brick. Black neighborhoods have been bulldozed and bombed, burned to the ground and made toxic to those who live in them. Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture. She's based and born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. The Sexiest Climate Solution?

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