Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City

by Clarence Taylor

Overview

A story of resistance, power and politics as revealed through New York City’s complex history of police brutality

The 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri was the catalyst for a national conversation about race, policing, and injustice. The subsequent killings of other black (often unarmed) citizens led to a surge of media coverage which in turn led to protests and clashes between the police and local residents that were reminiscent of the unrest of the 1960s.

Fight the Power examines the explosive history of police brutality in New York City and the black community’s long struggle to resist it. Taylor brings this story to life by exploring the institutions and the people that waged campaigns to end the mistreatment of people of color at the hands of the police, including the black church, the black press, black communists and civil rights activists. Ranging from the 1940s to the mayoralty of Bill de Blasio, Taylor describes the significant strides made in curbing police power in New York City, describing the grassroots street campaigns as well as the accomplishments achieved in the political arena and in the city’s courtrooms.

Taylor challenges the belief that police reform is born out of improved relations between communities and the authorities arguing that the only real solution is radically reducing the police domination of New York’s black citizens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479862450
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	12/20/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,116,199
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Clarence Taylor is Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College, CUNY, and author of The Black Churches of Brooklyn, Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools, Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century, and, most recently, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teachers Union.

Editorial Reviews

10/22/2018
Historian Taylor (Reds at the Blackboard) schools readers on what came before the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown were in American headlines. He maps the progress of New York residents’ attempts to combat the New York Police Department’s use of excessive force, from coverage of police brutality in early- to-mid-20th-century black weeklies like the People’s Voice and Crisis to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent successes and failures at increasing police oversight and curbing racial profiling. Chapters on the efforts of the Communist Party (which acknowledged the problem early, but were boxed out of mainstream civil rights activism by the NAACP and others) and the Nation of Islam (which adopted de-escalation tactics before police departments did) are particularly interesting, as is an account of the 1964 Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant riots brimming with primary sources. But Taylor’s narrative voice shines brightest in a detailed look at New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, a police accountability group that should be, but isn’t really, staffed by civilians. Taylor could perhaps have done more to highlight the activism of New York City’s Latin-American residents (aside from a brief section on the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, they are simply included alongside black residents in crime statistics and analysis). This well-researched, well-told book provides thoughtful context for the current American reckoning with police brutality. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"The time is ripe for this kind of book; and this history delivers the most informed and reasonable voice to an unprecedented and eager public readership. I can hardly wait to teach this book in my lectures and seminars in African American, urban and ethnic history and public policy. The American reading public has been presented with a precious gift by Professor Clarence Taylor: Bravo!"-Komozi Woodard,author of A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics

"This well-researched, well-told book provides thoughtful context for the current American reckoning with police brutality. "-Publishers Weekly

"This timely and urgent account of ​the long reign of police terror inflicted on Black New Yorkers also tells a heroic and largely unheralded story of resistance. In fighting for justice, Black New Yorkers have sought a fundamental redefinition of policing. Clarence Taylor's book is needed now more than ever."-Martha Biondi,author of To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City

"Taylor provides an essential history of the now, showing how current struggles for racial justice have emerged out of a long history of police abuse, protest, and inadequate reforms."-Alex Vitale,author of The End of Policing

"A rigorous and unsettling discussion of decades of police brutality within New York City's communities of color. Taylor writes with an authoritative knowledge of his urban narrative and controlled prose that doesn't mask anguished urgency about the disturbing topic...An important social history."-Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2018-10-09

A rigorous and unsettling discussion of decades of police brutality within New York City's communities of color.

Taylor (Emeritus, History/Baruch Coll.; Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union, 2010, etc.) writes with an authoritative knowledge of his urban narrative and controlled prose that doesn't mask anguished urgency about the disturbing topic. The author began to realize that despite renewed focus on police brutality after such flashpoints as the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, even social justice sympathizers lack awareness of the temporal depth of the problem. He argues that since the 1940s, police brutality has "led to civil unrest and mistrust between blacks and the NYPD…[and] a long history of African Americans' efforts to expose the brutality." The author documents this through a narrative survey, concluding in the present day. He reveals an epidemic of strong-arm policing in postwar New York, which the era's black press scrupulously documented and the Communist Party visibly if inconsistently protested prior to the McCarthy era. In the 1950s, mutual hostility developed between the NYPD and the Nation of Islam; surprisingly, Taylor documents how NOI representatives, including Malcolm X, worked to defuse conflicts. As tensions mounted in the 1960s, following disturbances in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, politicians and activists advocated for greater civilian oversight of the department but were thwarted by a conservative backlash advancing a "false narrative" that such oversight was meant to coddle black criminals. Later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously embraced tough-on-crime, "broken windows" policing. Although crime declined dramatically on his watch, he displayed racial insensitivity as brutality complaints soared, culminating in the police torture of Abner Louima and several notorious fatalities. In recent years, cautiously progressive policies on accountability and "stop and frisk" tactics defused Giuliani-era tensions, but Taylor remains unconvinced, noting, "Mayor [Bill] de Blasio's adamant defense of broken windows predicted ongoing harassment of black and brown people."

An important social history for students and policymakers regarding the relationship between police brutality, urban stability, and civic accountability.

Kirkus Reviews

"This timely and urgent account of ​the long reign of police terror inflicted on Black New Yorkers also tells a heroic and largely unheralded story of resistance. In fighting for justice, Black New Yorkers have sought a fundamental redefinition of policing. Clarence Taylor's book is needed now more than ever."

Martha Biondi

"Taylor provides an essential history of the now, showing how current struggles for racial justice have emerged out of a long history of police abuse, protest, and inadequate reforms."

Alex Vitale

"The time is ripe for this kind of book; and this history delivers the most informed and reasonable voice to an unprecedented and eager public readership. I can hardly wait to teach this book in my lectures and seminars in African American, urban and ethnic history and public policy. The American reading public has been presented with a precious gift by Professor Clarence Taylor: Bravo!"

Komozi Woodard

"Clarence Taylor offers a judicious history of black New Yorkers’ efforts to confront police brutality since the 1940s."

Journal of American Ethnic History

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