Overview

In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city's political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago's Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted. In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans' lives long before the late-century ""wars"" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.

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9781469659176

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Balto's rich book dives specifically into the deep-seated historical relationship between blacks and the Chicago Police. Balto . . . hits every nail on the head and into the plank for good measure, dicing up facts about police brutality from the 1900s and sifting them with historical photos, quotes and stories of innocent black youth who only wanted equal treatment and better work opportunities.--Newcity Using Chicago as a quintessential case study of black versus police relationships, Balto unfolds the grisly saga of police repression, one that the author uniquely dates back to the early 20th century. . . . Well-written, highly convincing, and richly documented.--Choice Reviews

Balto's rich book dives specifically into the deep-seated historical relationship between blacks and the Chicago Police. Balto . . . hits every nail on the head and into the plank for good measure, dicing up facts about police brutality from the 1900s and sifting them with historical photos, quotes and stories of innocent black youth who only wanted equal treatment and better work opportunities. - Newcity Using Chicago as a quintessential case study of black versus police relationships, Balto unfolds the grisly saga of police repression, one that the author uniquely dates back to the early 20th century. . . . Well-written, highly convincing, and richly documented. - Choice Reviews

Author Information

Simon Balto is assistant professor of history and African American studies at the University of Iowa.

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