In the latest episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald sits down with historian Professor Josh Clark Davis of the University of Baltimore to explore a critical but often overlooked dimension of the civil rights era—organized resistance to police violence. Drawing from his new book Police Against the Movement, Davis challenges conventional narratives that frame police brutality as something endured rather than actively resisted, arguing instead that civil rights activists across the country directly organized against policing practices and state repression.
The conversation situates contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter within a deeper historical lineage, pushing back against the common media framing that modern activism represents something entirely new. Davis explains that while iconic images of police violence in Birmingham and Selma are widely remembered, far less attention has been paid to the ways civil rights groups—particularly organizations like CORE and SNCC—mobilized protests, sit-ins, and campaigns specifically targeting police misconduct and surveillance.
A key theme of the discussion is the role of local police departments—not just federal agencies like the FBI—in suppressing justice movements. Davis highlights the widespread use of “red squads,” local intelligence units that conducted surveillance, infiltration, and political repression across the country. These efforts, he argues, were national in scope and often more pervasive than commonly understood, reshaping how historians should interpret state power during the civil rights era.
The episode concludes by connecting these historical patterns to present-day concerns, including the expansion of surveillance technologies and the persistence of aggressive law enforcement tactics. Davis emphasizes that both the methods of repression and the strategies of resistance—such as documenting police actions and organizing community defense—have deep roots in the civil rights movement, underscoring the enduring relevance of this history in understanding today’s struggles for justice.
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