Assignment:
Assignment Overview: Policing in the US has a long and powerful history and this history, informs where we are today.
In this assignment, students will research how policing developed across the North and South, and its legacy today.
Objective of this Assignment:
This assignment will offer students the academic content and reflective opportunity to understand US policing and its impact on crime and community relations.
More specifically, this assignment will:
• Provide resources to students to better understand the US system of policing
• Offer students insights into how policing was similar and different in the US North and South
• Explain the impact of this history on police-community relations and with communities of color in particular.
• Offer students the information needed to understand current dialogue about police reform efforts
Assignment:
This assignment contains two parts:
Part I: Please review each of the below websites and prepare formal, written (typed) answers to the below questions.
Part II: Please be prepared to discuss your answers and reflections in a live Zoom meeting.
To receive full credit, students must arrive to the Zoom meeting with the paper completed and ready to hand in.
Directions will be offered in the meeting as to how to hand in the assignment.
Links (please make sure you budget enough time to view the links, take notes, and type up formal answers to the below questions):
Through Line: American Police: (1:04 minutes - please reserve time to listen to this)
The Conversation: The racist roots of American policing
BBC: George Floyd: How the USA's history has shaped today's police brutality (3 minutes)
CNN: There is a growing call to defund the police: what does that mean?
Want to learn more? Check out these (not part of required assignment)
Resources to teach the history of policing in America that you won't find in textbooks: Washington Post:
Questions: Please type out formal answers to the following for submission AND bring your answers and reflections to our live Zoom meeting.
Please prepare answers to the following questions before the Zoom Meeting.
1. What happened after the Civil War? Explain Black Codes and how they were politically/legally justified?
2. How did the KKK evolve?
3. What was happening in the North with policing? Discuss the impact of England's model. What was the role of police in communities? Describe the connection between police and local politicians.
4. How do African Americans at the time of the Great Migration describe the difference between living in the South versus the North? What is Police Science and why is it harmful?
5. How were police professionalized after Prohibition and what did this mean for African Americans?
6. How can we turn the tide? How do we get out of this (from Throughline)?
7. What does it mean to defund the police? Where would the money go and why?
8. Other thoughts and reflections?