The Racist Roots of American Policing: From Slave Patrols to traffic Stops
Outrage over racialism and therefore the killing of African Americans by cops and vigilantes in recent years helped create the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered within the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a policeman shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted. The precedents include the la riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of law enforcement officials for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for battery . I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on problems with race, class, and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in crimina