Course Description  

This course examines the legacies and afterlives of slavery in mass incarceration and modern-day policing. In recent years, there has been growing public awareness that mass incarceration has its roots in slavery and that racial bias infects all aspects of our criminal injustice system. However, our nation has yet to reckon with the reality that America’s systems of policing and mass criminalization have histories rooted in white fear—not merely of Black people, or even Black resistance, but of the very notion of Black freedom. Therefore, this course examines how, from the founding of the nation, Black people’s desire for freedom led fearful whites to establish a network of laws, policies and social practices that laid a durable foundation for systems of racial and social control that continue to exist in modified forms today. Creating a precedent for state policing and social control that would haunt future generations of Black people in America, state and federal authorities implemented a complex web of legal codes, patrols, and state militias that monitored and governed Black people’s lives in sickening detail, ensuring that whites were empowered to use all means—legal and extralegal—to control Black lives. This course helps us to understand how and why these systems emerged, and why policing has become such a problem in American society that it infiltrates and undermines nearly every Black family and community across the nation, even in the 21st century.  

Course Synopsis

This course begins by examining policing and incarceration in the contemporary moment. We will discuss the recent murders of Black people by police, including the tragic deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And we will explore the rise and structure of the modern police state in the United States, particularly the role of mass incarceration in Black communities.  

Then, in an effort to locate the origins of policing in Black communities, we will analyze the historical evolution of surveillance and policing. As this course reveals, government policing of Black people in mainland North America began almost concurrently with the introduction of slavery itself. Within two decades after Africans landed in Virginia in 1619, colonial lawmakers began drafting legal codes defining slavery and limiting enslaved Africans’ rights. By the late 17th century, slave laws became increasingly draconian, particularly as panic about Black rebellion intensified. White colonists lived in deep fear of their enslaved human property—a fear that proliferated throughout all thirteen colonies, and resulted in laws granting white people “absolute power and authority” over Black people. In the years that followed, the Haitian Revolution and the subsequent rebellions it inspired prompted widespread anxiety among whites in the United States and caused white governmental authorities to enact increasingly despotic laws, targeting men, women, and children.  

Even after slavery’s legal demise, local, state, and federal authorities continued to monitor and police Black communities. Most southern states passed Black Codes, which scrutinized and governed Black people’s movements and empowered the police and the militia to monitor and punish them for any and all violations. As during enslavement, Black women were especially subject to physical and sexual violence at the hands of police. In subsequent decades, state and federal authorities persisted in their mission to monitor and sabotage Black liberatory leaders and organizations. Most famously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s notorious counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) targeted Dr. Martin Luther Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and others, seeking to “prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify” the Black community. And by the late 20th century, the devastating loophole in the 13Amendment, which banned slavery “except as a punishment for crime,” gave rise to the afterlives of slavery: racial profiling, mass incarceration, and modern-day surveillance and policing. Therefore, this course concludes with a detailed examination of contemporary policing, surveillance, and mass incarceration.  

Course content / trigger warning

Given this course’s focus on violence—physical, psychological, and sexual—there may be times that the course content could be disturbing, even traumatizing for some students. If you suspect that specific material is likely to be emotionally challenging for you, I am available to discuss any concerns you may have before the subject comes up in class. Even so, I am aware that it’s not always possible to predict one’s emotional reactions, so if you ever wish to discuss your personal responses to course material with the class, or with me individually afterwards, I welcome such discussions as an appropriate part of our classwork.

In addition, if you ever feel the need to step away during a class discussion, you may always do so without academic penalty. You will, however, be responsible for any material you miss. If you need to leave the room for a significant time, please obtain notes from another student or see me individually to discuss the situation.

Classroom philosophy  

Your instructor holds the perspective that all classes are essentially intercultural encounters—among individuals in the class, between the readers and any given author, and among the authors, the students, and the professor. We are all learning how to effectively learn from one another. Such a classroom requires particular capacities and commitments on our part. It also requires mutual effort in helping each other understand the course material and the differing interpretative positions we may bring to a more complex understanding of the material. While each of us seeks to advance our own knowledge, we are also a community in which we are each responsible to help the other members of the community learn effectively.

In an effort to enhance our learning experience, we expect that students and instructors will commit to do the following:  

• Acquire and utilize intellectual skills and capacities that will enable us to work effectively with the complexities of the course material.
• Develop increased self-knowledge and knowledge of others.
• Understand how the material we are studying relates to our own previous learning, backgrounds, and experiences, and how we can use and apply our new knowledge effectively.
• Develop the ability to critique material in a mature manner using our own previous learning and experiences as part of the critique when appropriate.
• Develop the communication skills that facilitate our learning and our ability to listen, read, reflect, and study to understand.
• Remain engaged and in communication even when the course material or discussion is confusing or upsetting, by recognizing that understanding does not imply agreement.
• Respect everyone’s ideas and values even when we disagree.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to: 

1. Analyze and interpret primary source materials.

2. Speak and write critically about secondary historical sources by examining diverse interpretations of past events and ideas in their historical contexts.

3. Understand and analyze the origins and development of policing and mass incarceration in Black communities.

Example Early Paper Assignment (referred back to at the end)

The first two weeks of this term will be dedicated to exploring contemporary policing in Black communities. Students will submit a short, “think piece” reflecting on the following questions: Based on what we have discussed in class so far, what are your thoughts about contemporary policing? In what ways is policing a “problem” in Black communities and what factors, policies, and laws have created this problem? Why might it be important to consider history and America’s racial past as key factors in understanding how Black people are monitored and policed in the US?  

Example Primary Source Analysis

Throughout the term, we will read several primary sources, which are documents or images that were created during the historical time period we are studying. This assignment allows students to practice analyzing primary source materials and using them to interpret the nature of policing in Black communities. Students should select a primary source and submit a short, written analysis based on the course material.  

Papers should be approximately 3-5 pages and should consider the following:

1. When was the source created and why? Was it created in response to a particular event or series of events?

2. What does the source reveal about the nature of policing and surveillance in Black communities during the era in which it was created?  

3. What particular fears does it reveal among whites?  

4. What repercussions would it have created for the Black community?  

Example Final Reflection Paper  

Students will submit a paper reflecting on the following questions: after reviewing your first reflection paper, how has your thinking about policing in Black communities evolved during this semester? How have our readings and discussions about the historical development of policing changed or enriched your understanding of modern-day policing, surveillance, and mass incarceration? Have any of your original ideas radically changed? If so, why? What evidence from the course would you use to support or refute your original thinking?  

Course readings

The following books are required for the course

Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003).

Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017).

Excerpts from the following books are required reading

• Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
• R. J. M. Blackett, The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
• Ward Churchill, The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (New York: South End Press, 2001).
• Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004).
• Talitha L. LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).
• Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (New York: Vintage, 2011).
• Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, [2010] 2019).

Other required readings:  

• ‍The Massachusetts “Body of Liberties,” Old South Leaflets (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, n.d. [c. 1900]), 7: 261-280.
• An Act for the Better Ordering and Governing Negroes and Other Slaves in This Province (1740).
• The 13^th Amendment.
• Politicians’ letters about the Haitian Revolution.
• Alex Altman, “Why the Killing of George Floyd Sparked an American Uprising,” TIME, June 4, 2020.
• Say Burgin, “Rosa Parks on Police Brutality: The Speech We Never Heard,” Black Perspectives, January 23, 2020.
• Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Fear of a Black Uprising,” The New Republic, August 13, 2020.
• Kali Nicole Gross, “Policing Black Women’s and Black Girls’ Bodies in the Carceral United States,” Souls, 20:1, (2018) 1-13.
• LaShawn Harris, “Everyday Harm: Black Women and a History of Police Violence.”
• Cheryl Hicks, “Breonna Taylor, Police Brutality, and Black Women’s Historic Demands for Justice.”  
• Jill Lepore, “The Invention of the Police,” The New Yorker, July 13, 2020.
• NPR News Coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion.
• Movement for Black Lives, “End the War on Black Trans, Queer, Gender Nonconforming, and Intersex People.”  
• Sasha Ann Panaram, “#SayHerName: Seeking Justice for Breonna Taylor,” Black Perspectives, November 2, 2020.
• Laurence Ralph, “The logic of the slave patrol: the fantasy of black predatory violence and the use of force by the police” Palgrave Communications 5, 130 (2019).
  
• LaKisha Simmons, “How the State Deploys ‘Know-Your-Place’ Violence against Black Families in their Homes.”
• Videos of police beating Rodney King and the murder of George Floyd - Trigger Warning: These videos depict extreme violence, and viewing them is NOT required for the course. They are available only for those who choose to view and analyze them, so please watch them at your own discretion.