Giving Compass Take:

· Writing for The Marshall Project, Natalie Y. Moore tells the story of how John Burge, a Chicago Police Officer, and his crew tortured false confessions from hundreds of black men and how the survivors won reparations.

· How can the rest of America learn from this? 

· Learn more about Chicago's activists' battle against racism and inequality.

The nightmare starts in 1983. Darrell Cannon is driving a car down an expressway, looking for a place to dump a body. Since his elementary school days, he's been affiliated with a gang known as the Blackstone Rangers. By his mid-teens, he was a high school dropout working for a Blackstone leader named Jeff Fort, which is how he came to kill a man and go to prison the first time. Now he's out and back in the mix, and a few hours ago, another gang member named A.D. killed someone and asked him to help clean up the scene of the crime.

They find a spot, toss out the body and speed away as fast as they can.

A few days later, police arrest Cannon for the murder. He tells them he was just along for the ride, but they aren't in the mood to listen. They drive to a remote spot by a railroad track and stand him up in the road with his hands handcuffed behind him. One of the officers holds out a 10-inch cattle prod and another holds a pump-action shotgun. In an affidavit for one of the appeals he will file years later, he'll remember the warning one of the officers gave him: "You're in for a long, hard day. We have a scientific way of interrogating niggers."

Read the full article about a Chicago's activists' battle to get justice for hundreds of black men by Natalie Y. Moore at The Marshall Project.