Here's why the Congressional Black Caucus is wearing '1870' pins to Biden's State of the Union

The State of Union speech is full of scheduling and tradition, but tonight on the floor of Congress a new cause will be visibly seen for the first time.

In the recent aftermath of the Tyre Nichols killing by five members of the Memphis Police Department that are charged with murder, members of the Congressional Black Caucus will be wearing '1870' pins to recognize the date of the first recorded death of an unarmed African-American person in the United States.

The pin recognizes the death of Henry Truman, a 26-year old African-American man who was killed on March 31, 1870 by Philadelphia police officer John Whiteside after an accusation of shoplifting from a grocery store.

Although over 150 years old, the case is well documented.

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Truman was leaving a grocery store and then began being chased by a police officer who accused him of shoplifting. The chase ended up in an alley and when Truman turned around to ask what he had done wrong he was fatally shot by Whiteside. The encounter was covered the next day by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In a rarity for the times, Whiteside was convicted of manslaughter.

The problem has persisted in the country ever since. According to Statista, 1,353 African-Americans have been killed by the police since 2017. African-Americans are also more likely to be assaulted by police, and more likely to be pulled over in the first place.

"I'm tired of moments of silence," Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-New Jersey), the representative who came up with the 1870 pin idea, said in an interview with Yahoo News. "I'm tired of periods of mourning. I wanted to highlight that police killings of unarmed Black citizens have been in the news since 1870 and yet significant action has yet to be taken."