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A collage of the cover and various pages of the Walker Report.

How the 1968 DNC Devolved into ‘Unrestrained and Indiscriminate Police Violence’

As protesters prepare for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a half-century old report provides lessons for preventing chaos.
by Lakeidra Chavis via The Marshall Project on August 14, 2024
Cover of "Excited Delirium," left, and author Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, right.

The Racist, Xenophobic History of "Excited Delirium"

A new book takes on a diagnosis invented to cover up police killings: that men of color are “combusting as a result of their aggressiveness.”
by Julia Métraux, Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús via Mother Jones on July 23, 2024
Student protestor holding sign behind campus police officer

Campus Police Are Among the Armed Heavies Cracking Down on Students

While some of the worst behavior has come from local and state police, university police have shown themselves to be just as capable of brutality.
by Alex S. Vitale via The Nation on May 9, 2024
"The Politics of Safety" book cover

Lawless Law Enforcement

Because of the growth of the Prohibition state, police abuse fomented considerable discussions among police and lawyer associations, criminologists, and others.
by Brock Schnoke via UNC Press Blog on January 17, 2024
African Americans sitting on their front porch looking at a National Guardsman holding a rifle.

A Haunting Portrait of Newark’s Bloody Summer of Unrest

The photojournalist Bud Lee captured the riots of 1967 and the human cost of the brutal police crackdown.
by M. Z. Adnan via The New Yorker on July 29, 2023
Protesters at a police brutality rally at the Texas State Capitol in 1977.

The Killing of José Campos Torres

Decades before the recent police violence in Memphis, a brutally beaten Latino man was tossed by officers into a Houston bayou and drowned.
by Mimi Swartz via Texas Monthly on February 14, 2023
SCLC leader Wyatt T. Walker and Jackie Robinson tour the ruins of Mount Olive Baptist Church, Sasser, Georgia, September 9th, 1962.

‘A Model Southern Sheriff’: Z.T. Mathews and the 1962 Fight for Voting Rights in Terrell County

A glaring portrait of the human cost of law enforcement officers who claim to be above the law.
by David Kurlander via CAFE on January 26, 2023
Participants celebrate during the L.A. Pride Parade in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on June 12, 2022.
partner

The History Missing From the LGBTQ Story Told During Pride Month

Why reinserting race and class into our understanding of Pride is so important.
by Beau Lancaster via Made By History on June 20, 2022
Picture of Senator Raphael G. Warnock

Sen. Raphael G. Warnock Remembers How the Police Killing of Amadou Diallo Sparked His Activism

"It didn’t make much sense for us to be talking about justice in the classroom if we weren’t willing to get in the struggle in the streets."
by Raphael Warnock via Literary Hub on June 16, 2022
Three Mississippi women, denied the right to go onto the House floor at the opening of the new Congress, stand Jan. 4, 1965, outside the Capitol. From left: Annie Devine, Fannie Lou Hamer and Victoria Gray.
partner

Remembering Past Harms is a Key First Step for Achieving Social Justice

Mississippi makes a move to confront a shameful episode from the past.
by Keisha N. Blain via Made By History on June 9, 2022
MLK in a police station

Martin Luther King Knew That Fighting Racism Meant Fighting Police Brutality

Critics of Black Lives Matter have held up King as a foil to the movement’s criticisms of law enforcement, but those are views that King himself shared.
by Jeanne Theoharis via The Atlantic on September 15, 2021
Newark protesters and National Guard

A Warning Ignored

America did exactly what the Kerner Commission on the urban riots of the mid-1960s advised against, and fifty years later reaped the consequences it predicted.
by Jelani Cobb via New York Review of Books on July 29, 2021
Police aiming guns at unarmed black people

Police and the License to Kill

Detroit police killed hundreds of unarmed Blacks during the civil rights movement. Their ability to get away with it shows why most proposals for police reform are bound to fail.
by Matthew D. Lassiter via Boston Review on April 28, 2021
A memorial for Eric Garner near the site of his death in Staten Island, NY
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Calls to Disarm the Police Won’t Stop Brutality and Killings

The history of unarmed police brutality is rooted in anti-Blackness.
by M. Aziz via Made By History on April 18, 2021
Rodney King at a press conference surrounded by reporters
partner

Video of the Police Assault of Rodney King Shocked Us. But What Did It Change?

Thirty years after the police beating of Rodney King, it's clear that shock and anger don't translate into meaningful reform.
by Felicia Angeja Viator via Made By History on March 3, 2021
Teenagers from PAL take part in “Commissioner for A Day” on February 18, 1969

Rivalry in the Trenches

Philadelphia’s PAL and the Black Panther Party’s efforts to mold black youth into their own image.
by Menika Dirkson via The Metropole on September 23, 2020
African American man at a desk with microphones, nameplate shows he is Newark's Mayor Kenneth Gibson.

Police Power and the Election of Newark’s First Black Mayor

Fifty years ago, Newark, New Jersey, elected its first Black mayor—Kenneth Gibson—at a moment when there was an urgency to address police violence.
by Andrew Grim via Black Perspectives on September 18, 2020
Police wielding batons face a crowd of people.

'Fascist Storm Troopers': Racist Police Violence in 1940s America

In 1949, truncheon-wielding police officers descended on the racially integrated concert of singer Paul Robeson.
by Gustavus Stadler via Al Jazeera on September 4, 2020
African American man leaning on his car, by a wall spray painted with the words "let's remember McDuffie"

The Long, Painful History of Racial Unrest

A lethal incident of police brutality in Miami in 1979 offers just one of countless examples of the reality generations of African Americans have faced.
by Ashley Howard via Smithsonian on August 28, 2020
Three African American protest leaders address a crowd.

True Stories About the Great Fire

A movement’s early days as told by those who rose up, those who bore witness, those who grieved, and those who hoped.
by Dan Adler, Anthony Breznican, Kenzie Bryant, Michael Calderone, Arimeta Diop, Caleb Ecarma, Joe Hagan, Chris Smith, Claire Landsbaum, Abigail Tracy, Erin Vanderhoof via The Hive on August 24, 2020
Lithograph depicting police attacking African Americans in New Orleans, 1874

On Riots and Resistance

Exploring freedpeople’s struggle against police brutality during Reconstruction.
by Robert D. Bland via Muster on August 11, 2020
Photo of KRS-One superimposed on photo of NY subway station in the Bronx

How KRS-One’s ‘Sound of Da Police’ Went From Anti-Cop Anthem to Theme Song and Back Again

The 1993 song reinvigorated the rap legend’s career — and against all odds became a Hollywood (and police) favorite
by Eric Ducker via Medium on July 25, 2020
Drawing of a boy and girl holding their hands behind their heads.

The Scars of Being Policed While Black

From unjustified stops of Black teenagers to a device to torment people in custody, racist police brutality runs deep.
by Laurence Ralph via New York Times Op-Docs on June 30, 2020
Malcom X holding up a crime scene photo of Ronald Stokes's murder.

The Death That Galvanized Malcolm X Against Police Brutality

Decades before protests against mass incarceration galvanized the black freedom struggle, Malcolm indicted the entire justice system as racist.
by Peniel E. Joseph via Literary Hub on June 23, 2020
Demonstrators against police brutality.
partner

The Explicit Anthem of Anti-Racist Protest

Rap group N.W.A. understood vulgarity and controversy were necessary to draw attention to police brutality.
by Felicia Angeja Viator via Made By History on June 22, 2020
A wanted poster that reads "Wanted by the people: murder, aggravated assault and battery, denying civil rights, perjury. Brinley Evans, Thomas Lyons."

Wanted: An End to Police Terror

The pursuit of justice has been defined by a rote binary of punished in a cage versus unpunished and free.
by Stuart Schrader via Viewpoint Magazine on June 9, 2020
White state militia man with rifle confronting a Black man in a U.S. military uniform, while others look on.

How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities

"The problem is the way policing was built," historian Khalil Muhammad says.
by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Anna North via Vox on June 6, 2020

Rosa Parks on Police Brutality: The Speech We Never Heard

The Northern Student Movement considered inviting Rosa Parks to give a speech on police brutality, but ultimately decided against it.
by Say Burgin via Black Perspectives on January 23, 2020
Police body cam

The American Tradition of Anti-Black Vigilantism

The history of patrols, body cams, and more.
by Darryl Pinckney via Literary Hub on November 18, 2019

On Eric Garner, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Police Brutality as American Tradition

“¿DEFACEMENT?,” Inspired by the 1983 Police Murder of Michael Stewart.
by Johanna F. Almiron via Literary Hub on September 13, 2019
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