The UN’s Genocide Convention and “We Charge Genocide”

On June 26, 1945, the United States, along with other nations, signed the Charter of the United Nations which mandates that its members work towards the maintaining of international peace, upholding international law, and working to secure and maintain equality and equity by “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” Three years later, the United Nations met and held the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and they signed the resolution on December 19, 1948. It took effect in January of 1951. This convention arose out of the Holocaust and World War II, and it codified, in international law, the definition of genocide. While the United States signed the document in 1948, it did not ratify it at home until November 5, 1988, forty years after the convention.

In 1951, William Patterson and the Civil Rights Congress submitted a petition to the United Nations charging the United States with genocide of African Americans and Blacks in the nation. We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People lays out detailed evidence pointing out how the United States has systematically violated the articles of the Genocide Convention, notably in the “killing of members of the group,” “causing serious bodily or…