Roots of the Policing Crisis

Roots of the Policing Crisis

Notable guides to the roots of white supremacy in American policing.

Staff Writer

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The 1619 Project:An ongoing New York Times multimedia project that reframes U.S. history with the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the story. (August 14, 2019)

“The Invention of the Police”: Historian Jill Lepore recounts the emergence of American policing as an institution designed to protect slavery. (New Yorker, July 13, 2020)

Book cover "Stony the Road" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Stony the Road, by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Courtesy Penguin

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. A new book by Black scholar and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. chronicles the century between the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement, documenting both the anti-Black political violence that ended Reconstruction and the cultural and political work within the Black community to resist Jim Crow segregation. (Penguin, 2019)

13th: Documentary film by Ava DuVernay about the history of criminalization in America. Available on YouTube and Netflix. (2016)

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