The actual situation is much more nuanced than that. The war was also supported by many black leaders and drug makers at the time.
>But early on, many African-American leaders championed those same tough-on-crime policies.
>The Rev. George McMurray was lead pastor at the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem in the 1970s, when the city faced a major heroin epidemic. He called for drug dealers to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. [...]
>Black support for the drug war didn't just grow in New York alone. At the federal level, members of the newly formed Congressional Black Caucus met with President Richard Nixon, urging him to ramp up the drug war as quickly as possible. [...]
>Voting records show that many black lawmakers supported some of the most punitive drug-war-era laws in America. But even some people who have long opposed harsh sentencing laws understand where supporters were coming from. The Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime pastor in New York, once was addicted to heroin and served time. He's convinced that black leaders who embraced the drug war did serious harm to the community, but says a lot of African-Americans were desperate for ways to make their neighborhoods safe again. "If you're the victim, then you don't want to hear anything about treatment, just, 'Get this guy off the street.' "