Edward Schwartz (1906–2005), photographer
Edward Schwartz Portfolio, Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
In 1951, William L. Patterson, Executive Secretary to the Civil Rights Congress, traveled to Paris with some of his colleagues to present a petition to the United Nations (UN) entitled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.” Despite receiving it, the UN never responded to the submission. The petition sought to charge the United States with genocide, as defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“the Genocide Convention”), for the mass murder and institutionalized oppression of Black people in America on the basis of race. It alleged a conspiracy of violence, perpetuated by the state, amounting to domestic genocide: “It is a crime so embedded in law, so explained away by specious rationale, so hidden by talk of liberty, that even the conscience of the tender minded is sometimes dulled.”
Articles II and III of the Genocide Convention define and prohibit genocide (as well as conspiracy to commit, public incitement to commit, or complicity in genocide). Though the UN approved the Genocide Convention in 1948, the U.S. did not adopt it until 1988. Article II states that:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Petitioners provided extensive examples of killings by police and ‘race murders’ whereby private citizens murdered Black individuals with little consequence—thereby making this violence permissible. Violence by private individuals was attributable to the state due to public declarations of state and federal elected officials of their intent to enforce segregation and deny full rights to Black Americans. The petition alleged that by promoting white supremacy, these elected officials portrayed violence against Black Americans as a civic virtue, thereby encouraging private citizens and vigilante groups to engage in violence. The petitioners described enforcement of an “extra-legal white supremacy code,” carried out by vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in mass intimidation and psychological terror. The petitioners cited examples of elected officials openly endorsing the policies of these groups, as well as admitting to their own membership and involvement.
In their call to the UN, the petitioners wrote, “As it cannot be effectively denied that mortal dies, so it cannot be convincingly said that Negroes in the United States are not persecuted, segregated, assaulted and killed, day in and day out, on the basis of race and in such numbers as to make this oppression an American institution.” It is this oppression that constitutes the charge of genocide: the longstanding history of discrimination and targeted violence by government institutions, the permissive allowance of American citizens to use terror and violence to uphold these anti-Black policies and attitudes, the forcible snuffing out of the livelihoods of Black Americans.
In his opening statement to the Nuremberg trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, as special prosecutor, argued the importance of preventing genocide as a matter of international concern. He described the extensive mistreatment by Germany of its citizens as a means of preparation for aggressive warfare, citing the state-sanctioned terrorism against its citizens as the “chief instrument for securing the cohesion of the German people in war purposes.” Petitioners used this idea to argue that if the Convention recognizes that preventing and punishing genocide requires international intervention—to step in when the state has not responsibly wielded their power—they must consider the case before them: “For the daily acts of genocide committed against the American Negro people are so numerous and of such long standing, embedding in the law and often perpetrated by such organs of state government as the police and courts, that they could not take place without the positive or negative sanction of the several states and the Government of the United States of America.” Thus, if white supremacy is the implicitly or explicitly expressed state philosophy, then the U.S. government both violated Article III’s sanction against “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” and “conspiracy to commit genocide.”
Regardless of whether the UN would ultimately agree with the allegations made in the petition, it is particularly striking that the organization refused to acknowledge the petition at all. The complete dismissal of the allegations, and the continued dismissal of the petition’s existence and legitimacy, signals a perilous future for the international enforcement of the Genocide Convention. It was a disservice to the global citizen to not consider the allegations brought before the international community, denying not only the potential for justice and relief, but also the right to be heard. In the their literature on genocide, the UN cites “intent” as the crux of the issue of the term’s application.
Though the UN claims that they do not themselves make a determination of genocide, UN offices and officials can use information collected to assess past or ongoing genocide or the risk for future genocide and advocate to prevent, halt and/or punish the allegedly responsible parties. Thus, the UN presumably owed the petitioners a duty to respond in some way: acknowledging receipt at the very least, or ideally, agreeing to engage in some level of fact-finding as requested by the petitioners.
When Patterson returned to the U.S. from Europe after presenting the petition to the UN, the State Department seized his passport, claiming it was not in the “best interest of the U.S.” to allow Patterson to travel abroad. In a 1970 foreword to a second published edition of the petition, Patterson reflected, “It is politically infantile to argue that another appeal to the UN can or will force the United States to become an adherent of the aims, principles and purposes of that international body. Such an appeal can, however, mobilize worldwide action against genocide.”
While one would hope that petitions such as this could mobilize the global community to investigate human rights violations and combat genocide, the practical role of the UN and the Genocide Convention remains elusive today—particularly when it comes to powerful state actors. In 2022, the UN Human Rights Council rejected a draft decision to hold a debate regarding alleged human rights violations by China against the Uyghur people as alleged in a UN report that same year. The following year, China was elected to the UN Human Rights Council. As of October 2024, nearly a year after the case was first brought, 14 states have intervened with support for South Africa in South Africa v. Israel (accusing Israel of the crime of genocide). Israel has until July 2025 to respond to a UN Special Committee’s finding that “Israel’s methods of war align with the characteristics of genocide,” forestalling any immediate determination. Genocide Watch, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness of potential and actual genocide, listed at least 12 ongoing genocides in 2024. Under current UN processes, it seems unlikely that the obligations of the Genocide Convention will do much to prevent and punish these atrocities in time to accomplish the most important objective–to save lives.
Author: Eleni Christine Papaiacovou-Lane is a J.D. Candidate at The George Washington University Law School. She has an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS, University of London, and a B.Sc. in Global Public Health/Dietetics from New York University.
Editors: Jake Wylie, Albert Anderson