Is george Zimmerman, the clown who killed travon Martin in Florida, a modern day "Patroller"? A thrown back from the days of oppression during slavery? I read a definition of the "patrollers" from Booker T Washington book "Up from slavery" and this is what he said: "The patrollers were bands of men -usually young men- who were organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going from one plantation to another without passes". george Zimmerman thought Travon didn't belong in a housing complex-in other words not authorized with permission/pass.
peace True indeed! They had badges and everything. I remember a scene in Roots where Chicken George was so proud that he had bought his freedom and had left his family back at the plantation and he was walking along a dirt road headed towards a different county when the slave patrols bumped into him. The slave patrollers already had a few brothers who were trying to escape in chains from their feet to their heads and they stopped to question George. He proudly declared "I'se free" and showed them him his manumission papers at which they scoffed and if i'm not mistaken they tore in half and threw them to the ground and shortly after he was taken and sent back to plantation life. That's a story in and of itself right there that we may never get to the root of. How many black 'slaves' made their way to freedom one way or another and were granted their papers, only to have those papers taken from them at some point or another by these slave patrollers and returned and sold back into plantation life on a different plantation because of course they couldn't return them to the plantation that had given them their manumission papers because they would run the risk of being fined themselves by the owner of said plantation... The bades today look just like they did back then because the slave patrols still exist, as indicated by the title of this thread...