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.
Praise
“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
“This gripping book provides a kaleidoscopic look at the foundational role that policing—and its opposition—played in the modern civil rights movement. Joshua Clark Davis provides an invaluable service in restoring the local police department to its rightful place as a fundamental barrier to racial justice across the nation. An excellent book, smartly told and rife with lessons for the present.” Dan Berger, author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family’s Journey
“Deeply researched and written in lively prose, Police Against the Movement takes us beyond federal surveillance to examine the local police departments across America that infiltrated and provoked activists in the Black freedom struggle. And the movement fought back, seeing no difference between police brutality and the slow death of legal surveillance, entrapment, and mass arrests in Black communities. This is a revealing history of political policing and police repression.” Naomi Murakawa, Princeton University, author of The First Civil Right