The Streets Belong to Us

“Revelatory. . . . While movements like #SayHerName highlight police violence against Black women today, [Fischer] shows us its deep roots in our history, our laws, and our cities.”—The Atlantic

“Richly detailed and thoroughly researched. . . . It is challenging to take an intersectional lens to historical materials, but Fischer’s monograph shows just how valuable that work can be.”—American Journal of Legal History

“[Fischer] shows in stunning detail how American policing has shifted its justifications over time to maintain control of Black people, especially Black women.”—Sarah Schulman, New York Review of Books

“Valuable and necessary . . . . A powerful historical analysis of sexualized policing in the US . . . . Highly recommended.”—CHOICE

“[An] eloquently written and insightful history. . . . The Streets Belong to Us is a welcome, expertly researched addition to our understanding of how racism and sexism have served as the foundation of police power.”—New Mexico Historical Review

“Anne Gray Fischer’s crucial book reveals the utterly pivotal role of the sexual policing of Black women in the vast buildup of police power across the twentieth-century United States. Brilliantly researched and compellingly argued, The Streets Belong to Us is a must-read for all who seek to understand the making of today’s policing crisis.”—Emily Thuma, author of All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence

“Well written, intellectually rigorous, and compelling, this impressive book tackles long-standing issues of policing and gender through the legal policies that impacted American women from the Great Depression to the mid-1990s. Its argument is historical and yet all too timely, making devastatingly clear how women’s bodies, and particularly Black women’s bodies, were central to strengthening and legitimizing the same carceral policing that violated and oppressed them.”—Cheryl Hicks, author of Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

“This innovative, deeply researched, and forcefully argued book deciphers an overlooked mechanism by which the state executed violence, namely the sexual policing of women’s bodies that legitimated, legalized, and sanctioned the mass expansion of police power. By attending to public morals enforcement over the course of the twentieth century, this book reveals how police power infiltrated the quotidian dimensions of women’s lives, mapping and remapping patriarchal and racial power onto cities’ built environment. This book perceptively shows a process that adapted over time, targeting white women’s sexuality during Prohibition, then criminalizing Black women during the era of ‘urban renewal,’ remaking the modern city along sexualized, racialized lines.”— Keona Ervin, author of Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis

“This incredibly important book will forever alter the historical record on racialized policing. Fischer shows how the police developed and refined their strategies not by targeting Black men on the street but by targeting Black women—illuminating the centrality of Black women’s sexuality to the entire project of racial spatial control.”—Tricia Rose, author of Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy