Masculinity, Marijuana & Miscegenation
How the War on Drugs began
Part 1 of 4
The Drug War was started by a man who said “Doctors could not treat addicts if they wished to” and that judges should not be afraid to toss “killer-pushers into prison and throw away the key.” Beginning under president hoover, Harry Anslinger’s racism and xenophobia as head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics shaped drug policy for over 30 years.
After talking with my community elders, I found out that “The War on Drugs” is not how the legacy of Anslinger’s work is understood in the Black collective imagination. My father, a retired gang member and baseball player, scrunched his face up in confusion at the mention of the War on Drugs. “Is it really a war on drugs?” he asked. He was right, “The War on Drugs” is a euphemism. “It’s really a war on us.”
Under the system of racial capitalism in the united states, power is expressed as control and exploitation of non-white bodies. I say “bodies” instead of “people” because u.s. White Supremacy culture dehumanizes people who aren’t white and only values us for the labor our bodies can do. With that in mind, Harry Anslinger was a perfectly american man. His success was directly tied to how much his policies legally restricted and punished people of color (specifically Black people, because racial capitalism came from the race-based enslavement of African peoples). The developing united states depended on the economic value of Black people and their forced labor to create wealth for white americans. The result: Black slaves and their labor equal the almighty american dollar. In the united states and those under u.s. influence, Black people are the currency of power.
Harry Anslinger hated jazz music. Under his direction, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (once the Department of Prohibition) kept a steady focus on cocaine and heroin. The bureau honed its sight on Billie Holiday, “Lady Day,” who was rumored to favor heroin and alcohol over the other drugs she used. She was coping. Lady Day grieved the dead of the Black Holocaust* using music and drugs.
Each performance was a protest. She sang in a beautiful and haunted voice:
“Southern trees bearing strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
“Pastoral scene of the gallant south
Them big bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia, clean and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
“Here is fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the leaves to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop”
cw// lynching
Ms. Holiday had witnessed the painful aftermath of lynchings before. She was from Louisiana, after all. Each time she sang Strange Fruit, maybe she was brought back there, smelling the pepper that mamas put in their boys’ shoes to keep dogs away, smelling charred flesh left in the sun too long.
Before she could bring herself to sing about Southern White Supremacy to integrated Northern audiences, she had to steel herself. Because each time Ms. Holiday began to sing Strange Fruit, Harry Anslinger and his legal lynch mob rushed the stage from their front-row seats to arrest her before she could finish. Anslinger’s favorite agent, a sadist named George White, “whole-heartedly” harassed (even planted evidence on) Ms. Holiday unto her death at age 44 because she was a rich Black woman who didn’t know her place. White was a “red-blooded American” man known to spike women’s drinks at bars with LSD just for fun. Backed by the Bureau, he lied, killed, cheated, stole, raped, and pillaged “with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest” [1].
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics justified ripping apart families and communities because Black americans were “10 percent of the total population, but 60 percent of the addicts” [1]. After Harry Anslinger heard about white actress Judy Garland’s dependence on heroin, he gave her some friendly advice and a letter of recommendation. For a white socialite in D.C., he refused to taint her reputation with an arrest and helped decrease her substance dependence. Harry Anslinger hunted and tortured (yes, actually!) Billie Holiday like an animal for daring to drugs while Black. Punishing Black people was and is a business. From slave-catching to the prison-industrial complex, money is Black bodies. Power can be measured by who controls Black bodies and their labor. With $o few u$er$ of heroin and cocaine, the Federal Bureau of Narcotic$ increa$ed their power by expanding drug law$ to target cannabi$ user$.
Anslinger’s office, backed by powerful politicians and the pharmaceutical industry, publicized pseudoscience from “experts” which associated cannabis and violence. He ramped up prison sentences and implemented harsh drug laws to keep america clean during the radically free Jazz Age. He campaigned to white Protestants to convince them of the dangers of drug use:
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men… There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
–Harry Anslinger
Like I said, Harry Anslinger hated jazz music. The free-form sounds and improvisation somehow proved that drugs made people crazy. The jazz community was tight-knit; sistas and brothas rarely snitched. More than that, he hated “jazz musicians” (which was code for Black men) and jazz concerts that “reeked of filth” [1]. Famous jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong promoted cannabis to Black folks as a relaxant that makes “you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro” [2]. Armstrong was arrested in 1930 for possession.
*“Black Holocaust” broadly refers to the 400-year enslavement and oppression of Black people in the u.s. “Black Genocide” refers to the murders of Black people by lynch mobs or police. In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress used this term to campaign for the government of the united states to be held accountable for genocide against Black Americans.
Sources
- Hari, Johann. “The Hunting of Billie Holiday: How Lady Day was in the middle of a Federal Bureau of Narcotics Fight.” From https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/drug-war-the-hunting-of-billie-holiday-114298/
- Smith, Laura. “How a racist hate-monger masterminded America’s War on Drugs.” Timeline. Feb 2018. https://timeline.com/harry-anslinger-racist-war-on-drugs-prison-industrial-complex-fb5cbc281189
