Police Against the Movement: The Forgotten Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle

FAIN: FZ-287213-22

Joshua Clark Davis
University of Baltimore (Baltimore, MD 21201-5720)

Writing a book on the policing of twentieth century civil rights activism, activist efforts to effect police reform, and strategic responses by some urban policing agencies. 

Writing for a broad public audience, I seek to answer three interrelated questions. First, how did police across the United States treat and mistreat the civil rights movement, investigating and retaliating against activists through a variety of means? Second, how did civil rights activists use pickets, rallies, and marches to demand equal treatment from police? Third, how did police discredit such protests as dangerous acts of extremism, forestalling the emergence of a national movement for equitable policing until the 2010s and exacerbating the larger crisis of racial inequality in our criminal justice system for decades?

Associated Products

“Birmingham’s Use of Police Dogs on Civil Rights Protesters Shocked Liberals Onlookers. But the Backstory Was All-American,” (Article)
Title: “Birmingham’s Use of Police Dogs on Civil Rights Protesters Shocked Liberals Onlookers. But the Backstory Was All-American,”
Author: Joshua Clark Davis
Abstract: In May 1963, police in Birmingham, Alabama viciously attacked crowds protesting racial segregation with clubs, fire hoses, and dogs. Just as horrific videos of police killing George Floyd and Tyre Nichols galvanized protests across the country and world decades later, the outrage in the wake of Birmingham’s canine unit attacking protesters as young as four helped to ignite demonstrations around the globe. But while Birmingham’s canine units have endured as powerful symbols of racist backlash against the civil rights movement, journalists and historians have neglected to grapple with the larger meaning of police dogs, a tool for apprehending suspects and controlling crowds that American law enforcement only developed in the 1950s, just as the Black freedom struggle was blossoming into a mass movement. Although images of police dogs incapacitating Black citizens may evoke unsettling, centuries-old associations with bounty hunters pursuing escaped enslaved people, the police dog is an innovation of modern policing. Through extensive research, I’ve uncovered a rich cache of documents revealing how Birmingham first developed its police dog program in 1959, under the guidance of police in the purportedly “moderate” city of Baltimore, which established America’s first canine police unit three years earlier. Baltimore police promoted their dogs to other departments around the country with an almost evangelical zeal, not unlike today’s law enforcement boosters who champion tasers and body-worn cameras as humane, cutting-edge innovations. They also utilized them as PR props, parading them before civic groups and school kids in the hopes of putting a kind face on their profession at a time when it was coming under increased scrutiny from liberal judges and civil liberties advocates.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: http://https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/birmingham-civil-rights-march-history-dog-photo.html
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: Slate
Publisher: Slate

We Knew the FBI Spied on the March on Washington. They Weren’t the Only Ones. (Article)
Title: We Knew the FBI Spied on the March on Washington. They Weren’t the Only Ones.
Author: Joshua Clark Daivs
Abstract: Although the story of FBI surveillance of Dr. King is well known, no journalist or historian has previously written about how municipal police intelligence units from New York, Philadelphia, Birmingham, and Chicago blanketed the March on Washington with surveillance, both in the weeks leading up to the March and at the March itself.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: http://https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/march-on-washington-anniversary-police.html
Format: Magazine
Periodical Title: Slate
Publisher: Slate

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