Overview

The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expanded Baltimore’s law enforcement into a vast network designed to oppress Black people. Michael Casiano’s history charts the institutional consolidation of the city’s post–Civil War police state. Authorities in Baltimore organized and established municipal power in distinct but connected sites that included jails, areas of political and social activism, public schools, street corners, courtrooms, and homes. Casiano analyzes policing in light of two parallel and inextricable realities of the city’s governance. First, policing evolved from an inefficient and vigilante-driven system into a modern and paramilitary endeavor focused on suppressing citizens and maximizing the power, wealth, and reach of capitalists. Second, decades of racial antagonism shaped Baltimore policing into an apparatus primarily oriented around subduing Black freedom. A compelling urban history, Let Us Alone uses voices from all levels of society to examine police power, incarceration, and the perils of being Black in post–Civil War Baltimore.

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Reviews

“Casiano not only scrutinizes the actions of the Baltimore Police Department, but also a constellation of other actors, public and private. In doing so, he demonstrates the many ways in which police power impinged on the lives of African Americans, the poor, and mentally unstable citizens.” —Dennis Halpin, author of A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction and Its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865–1920

“Casiano not only scrutinizes the actions of the Baltimore Police Department, but also a constellation of other actors, public and private. In doing so, he demonstrates the many ways in which police power impinged on the lives of African Americans, the poor, and mentally unstable citizens.” - Dennis Halpin, author of A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction and Its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865–1920

Author Information

Michael Casiano is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

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