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Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality
A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States.
 
Too often, scholars and pundits argue either that police violence against African Americans has remained unchanged since the era of slavery or that it is a recent phenomenon and disconnected from the past. Neither view is accurate. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show, in narrative detail, how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

Wide racial differentials in the use of lethal force and beatings during arrest and interrogation emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. Adler explains how race control and crime control blended and blurred during this era, when police officers and criminal justice officials began to justify systemic violence against Black people as a crucial—and legal—tool for maintaining law and order. Bluecoated Terror explores both the rise of these law-enforcement trends and their chilling resilience, providing critical context for recent horrific police abuses as the ghost of Jim Crow law enforcement continues to haunt the nation.
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Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality
A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States.
 
Too often, scholars and pundits argue either that police violence against African Americans has remained unchanged since the era of slavery or that it is a recent phenomenon and disconnected from the past. Neither view is accurate. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show, in narrative detail, how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

Wide racial differentials in the use of lethal force and beatings during arrest and interrogation emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. Adler explains how race control and crime control blended and blurred during this era, when police officers and criminal justice officials began to justify systemic violence against Black people as a crucial—and legal—tool for maintaining law and order. Bluecoated Terror explores both the rise of these law-enforcement trends and their chilling resilience, providing critical context for recent horrific police abuses as the ghost of Jim Crow law enforcement continues to haunt the nation.
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Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality

Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality

by Jeffrey S. Adler
Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality
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Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality

Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality

by Jeffrey S. Adler

Overview

A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States.
 
Too often, scholars and pundits argue either that police violence against African Americans has remained unchanged since the era of slavery or that it is a recent phenomenon and disconnected from the past. Neither view is accurate. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show, in narrative detail, how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

Wide racial differentials in the use of lethal force and beatings during arrest and interrogation emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. Adler explains how race control and crime control blended and blurred during this era, when police officers and criminal justice officials began to justify systemic violence against Black people as a crucial—and legal—tool for maintaining law and order. Bluecoated Terror explores both the rise of these law-enforcement trends and their chilling resilience, providing critical context for recent horrific police abuses as the ghost of Jim Crow law enforcement continues to haunt the nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520385603
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 04/09/2024
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 208
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jeffrey S. Adler is Professor of History and Criminology and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida, where his research and teaching focus on the history of American violence, law, and race relations.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments 


Introduction 

1 • “Any Slight from a Negro Is a Humiliation That Must Be Instantly Revenged” 

2 • “At No Time in the History of Our State Has White Supremacy Been in Greater Danger” 

3 • “I Told the Officers to Go Ahead and Kill Me, as They Had Already Half Killed Me” 

4 • Buttercup Burns, Bulldog Johnny Grosch, and the Killer Twins 

5 • “Negroes Are Willing to Die Rather Than Submit to the White Man’s Terror” 

Conclusion 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
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