Occupied Territory

“Simon Balto’s study of twentieth-century black Chicago provides new insights into the historical roots of police abuse in black communities while challenging scholarship that posits the mid-twentieth century as a turning point for deteriorating relationships between the police and black Americans. This beautifully written history is a model of clarity and moral passion.”—Beryl Satter, author of Family Properties: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America

“The last several years have seen important histories written about the rise of mass incarceration in the United States, but what has been missing are studies that deepen our understanding of American policing. Simon Balto offers a much-needed history of policing in Chicago, clearly articulating the connection between the Chicago Police Department’s record of racism and abuse and its contemporary crisis of police brutality.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of Race for Profit and From BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation

“As police violence gains much-needed attention across the nation, this book provides crucial context for the ways in which these issues are not new. Using the War on Crime as 'an endpoint rather than a launching pad,' Balto gives a harrowing, meticulously researched account of the way the roots of policing have been deeply violent and more preoccupied with social control than with safety since the inception of the institution. It is a disturbing history, which makes it all the more urgent. This is an important read for anyone who wants to understand how we arrived at this dispiriting state—and how we might ever possibly escape its grasp.”—Eve L. Ewing, author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side

“A timely and important history, Balto skillfully creates an original interpretation of race and policing as well as the campaigns waged against racism and political repression by the black freedom struggle in twentieth-century Chicago that will be widely read.”—Jordan T. Camp, author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State

“A compelling regional case study of the Chicago Police Department’s vexed relationship with the African American community dating back to at least the 1910s and extending through the 1970s.”—Journal of African American History

“Chronicles the history of police violence and resistance in Chicago from the Red Summer of 1919 to the 1970s, a period when the groundwork for mass incarceration was being laid. . . . Until the appearance of Occupied Territory, little had been written about policing in twentieth-century Chicago, one of the most populous and heavily policed cities in the country, and thus Balto’s book is a welcome addition to this body of scholarship.”—Chicago Review

“One of the many reasons why Balto’s book is so crucial is the way that he demonstrates how Black Chicagoans have resisted CPD repression for as long as it has existed, from the NAACP and Chicago Freedom Movement to the Black Panthers to We Charge Genocide. . . . Balto’s book is an essential hundred-plus year history.”—South Side Weekly

“With scrupulous archival detail and sharp analytic focus. . . . Balto has produced a major work of history, forcing us to reimagine the political geography of the carceral state in ways that will be essential for any transformative and more just future.”—The Metropole