POLICE AGAINST THE MOVEMENT: THE SABOTAGE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE AND THE ACTIVISTS WHO FOUGHT BACK
A bold retelling of the 1960s civil rights struggle through its work against police violence—and a pre-history of both the Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged half a century later.
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.
Local law enforcement have done their best to erase the memory of this repression. Police Against the Movement returns activism against police abuses to the center of the civil rights story, confronting a campaign to conceal the struggle against state violence that continues to this day.
Police Against the Movement will be published by Princeton University Press in October 2025.