Joshua Clark Davis in conversation with Chenjerai Kumanyika

Police Against the Movement Brooklyn Book Launch

Please join us as we help launch Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back by Joshua Clark Davis in conversation with Chenjerai Kumanyika, Thursday November 6th.

Police Against the Movement shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: that the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, activists confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing department headquarters, and blocking traffic to protest officer misdeeds. In return, organizers found themselves the targets of overwhelming political repression in the form of police surveillance, infiltration by undercover officers, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at derailing their movement.

“This is a civil rights story that few know. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Americans built potent grassroots movements to make this nation a more just society. Police attempts to shut down their efforts have been relentless and consistently denied and covered up. But there has always been determined activism to counter such police abuse, and to demand accountability. Joshua Clark Davis has rescued this history powerfully in this must-read book.” Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

“When I was a child, my parents—both civil rights organizers—shared their suspicions that police were spying on our family and trying to destroy the Black freedom movement. In brilliant, harrowing detail, Joshua Clark Davis reveals how right they were. This lucid account exposes a chapter of American history that many hope to hide but is more relevant than ever in today’s political climate.” James Forman, Jr., Professor at Yale Law School and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Locking Up Our Own

Joshua Clark Davis is an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Baltimore and the author of Police Against The Movement and From Head Shops to Whole Foods

His research has earned awards from the Fulbright Program, the Silvers Foundation, and the NEH Public Scholars Program. I've written for The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, Jacobin, and The Washington Post, and my work has been highlighted in The New York Times, CNN, and Time.

Chenjerai Kumanyika

Alongside his scholarship and teaching, disciplinary service on the intersections of social justice and media, Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. He has written in scholarly venues such as Popular Music & Society, Popular Communication, The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, as well as public venues such as The Intercept, Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, and VICE.