Events › Joshua Clark Davis in conversation with Josie Duffy Rice – Police Against the Movement

A bold retelling of the 1960s civil rights struggle through its work against police violence—and a prehistory of both the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged half a century later.

A Cappella Books and the Auburn Avenue Research Library welcome author Joshua Clark Davis in honor of his new book, “Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back.” The author will appear in conversation with award-winning journalist and podcast host Josie Duffy Rice.

This event is free and open to the public; copies of “Police Against the Movement” will be available for purchase.

About the Book

“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, as Joshua Clark Davis shows, activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing outside department headquarters, and blocking city streets 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 discrediting and derailing their movement.

The history of the civil rights era abounds with accounts of physical brutality by county sheriffs and tales of political intrigue and constitutional violations by FBI agents. Turning our attention to municipal officials in cities and towns across the US—North, South, East, and West—Davis reveals how local police bombarded civil rights organizers with an array of insidious weapons. More than just physical violence, these economic, legal, and reputational attacks were designed to project the illusion of color-blind law enforcement.

The civil rights struggle against police abuses is largely overlooked today, the victim of a willful campaign by local law enforcement to erase their record of repression. By placing activism against state violence at the center of the civil rights story, “Police Against the Movement” offers critical insight into the power of political resistance in the face of government attacks on protest.

About the Author

Joshua Clark Davis is associate professor of history at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of “From Head Shops to Whole Foods” and the coeditor of “Baltimore Revisited,” and he has written for The Nation, Slate, Jacobin, and The Atlantic.

About the Conversation Partner

Josie Duffy Rice is a journalist, writer, and podcast host whose work focuses on prosecutors, prisons, and the criminal justice system. She is the creator and host of the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children,” which earned an Ambie Award for Best History Podcast, a Webby Award for Best Podcast Writing, and multiple Signal Awards. She has also hosted Roc Nation’s “Corruption Uncovered,” co-hosted Crooked Media’s “What a Day,” and co-created “Justice in America” with Clint Smith. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and more, and she was formerly President of The Appeal, a publication dedicated to criminal justice journalism. Along with Hannah Riley, Duffy Rice co-writes the “Jump Line,” an online newsletter dedicated to impactful journalism about public safety and the criminal legal system in America. She lives in Atlanta.