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Justice, Power, and Politics
Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power
In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city's political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago's Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted.
In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans' lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.
In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans' lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.
343 pages, Hardcover
First published April 22, 2019
34 people are currently reading
652 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
March 25, 2023
Really excellent history of the modern development of the Chicago Police Department exploring the political economy and decisions that produced its inbuilt racism and pervasive history of violence.Should be required reading for anyone interested in Chicago politics AND for abolitionists who want an in-depth case study of the relationship between politics and racist policing. One of the many strident points that Balto shows is showing how mass incarceration was based in preexisting practices of police racism. One of the things I think was missing from the book is more of an accounting of the failures of what the 1970s movement for community control of the police, Black police associations, and the Black political establishment. He describes their “high water marks” and then states their collapse. There are many lessons as to their failures that I think are related to the politics of reformism and relationship to the Democratic Party that I feel Balto only gestures to in the last chapter. That aside, tremendous work of scholarship that is analytically clear, anecdotally poignant, and politically sharp.
December 25, 2020
Some white Americans have objected to the phrase "black lives matter." They say that all lives matter and, of course, that is true. Yet only someone ignorant of the history of blacks in America could question the phrase as all of that history cries out for it to be stated. Policing is a frustrating and difficult job. It would be appealing for there to be an easy way to identify and go after criminals. Race, in itself no cause for criminal behavior, has provided a flag for law enforcement in America for centuries now.
From the days of slavery through emancipation, the Great Migrations north that with white flight resulted in the ghettos, through the days of the Civil Rights Movement right up to the murder of George Floyd the plight of blacks in the United States has had a constant theme. That theme has been the labeling and dismissal of people with black skin to inferior status, one that makes them guilty until proven innocent, subject to constant scrutiny and abuse by law enforcement and, in general, a problem to be contained with little regard to civil rights.
Simon Balto's book chronicles this theme as it developed in Chicago, a city one of whose earliest settlers was black. Starting from the early days of the city when blacks were a very small proportion of the population, the areas where they lived were targeted for different treatment. From the 19th century into the 20th, black Chicago was the place where the law allowed organized criminal behavior to flourish, culminating in the days of Prohibition. Police themselves could profit from payoffs to look the other way.
Then came the punitive turn. Crack down and lock them up. But police corruption and violence against black Americans in Chicago did not change. Instead blacks were incarcerated for petty crimes that were never pursued in white areas. The reader is taken through the terms of many Chicago police superintendents and mayors when slight changes occur but nothing significant is altered, it is all variation on the theme.
Balto's history ends in the 1970's, not a drawback because it is makes clear to the reader that the issues black Chicagoans deal with today regarding the police have not changed. Stop and frisk, disproportionate arrests by race, police presence in great numbers with no relief from danger amid general harassment by the law is a constant.
It is an occupation that is remarkably similar to what Arab Palestinians endure in the West Bank. For a while Chicago police would set up checkpoints forcing everyone in a car or even walking on the sidewalk to be interrogated. Gang violence began in the mid 20th century to add to the woe with no effective response to date. Even the current call for uniformed policing to be accompanied by social workers is nothing new.
Efforts have not been lacking by the residents, including the Black Panthers who at one point were working to get gangs to come together to help the people. A very significant change came when Ralph Metcalfe was able to rally the people to vote against the Democratic machine of Mayor Daley resulting in the recognition of black Chicago as a political constituency that had to be addressed.
I was shocked when Balto relates the fact that the 1968 police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago lives in history, but few know that though that event resulted in no serious injuries or deaths, during that year nearly a dozen blacks were killed by police and in the two years that followed the Chicago police killed 58 blacks, none of these lives having a notable place in history. I checked and found that in 2020, 753 murders have occurred in Chicago, the majority of the victims being black.
This appalling number results from the gang violence that continues to plague black Chicago as the overall population of the city continues to drop and the budgets of both the city and Illinois have become buried in debt, in Chicago primarily for police pensions. Crowded tenements have been replaced by open lots owned by the city. Anyone can see the result by walking though areas of the west and south sides of the city on Streetview.
Like other white people in the Chicago area, throughout my life I have had the luxury of choosing where I wish to live and ignoring the plight of so many people with dark skin who have been trapped, exploited and victimized. The case has always been the same one and should be put in capital letters: BLACK LIVES MATTER.
It is the modern technology of video cameras that has made the situation clear to all Americans. We can now see for ourselves what has always been the case of police abuse of helpless people. It can no longer be denied or ignored and is a source of national shame that Simon Balto lets us know is nothing new.
You might investigate Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings (MASK), a group to which I contribute.
From the days of slavery through emancipation, the Great Migrations north that with white flight resulted in the ghettos, through the days of the Civil Rights Movement right up to the murder of George Floyd the plight of blacks in the United States has had a constant theme. That theme has been the labeling and dismissal of people with black skin to inferior status, one that makes them guilty until proven innocent, subject to constant scrutiny and abuse by law enforcement and, in general, a problem to be contained with little regard to civil rights.
Simon Balto's book chronicles this theme as it developed in Chicago, a city one of whose earliest settlers was black. Starting from the early days of the city when blacks were a very small proportion of the population, the areas where they lived were targeted for different treatment. From the 19th century into the 20th, black Chicago was the place where the law allowed organized criminal behavior to flourish, culminating in the days of Prohibition. Police themselves could profit from payoffs to look the other way.
Then came the punitive turn. Crack down and lock them up. But police corruption and violence against black Americans in Chicago did not change. Instead blacks were incarcerated for petty crimes that were never pursued in white areas. The reader is taken through the terms of many Chicago police superintendents and mayors when slight changes occur but nothing significant is altered, it is all variation on the theme.
Balto's history ends in the 1970's, not a drawback because it is makes clear to the reader that the issues black Chicagoans deal with today regarding the police have not changed. Stop and frisk, disproportionate arrests by race, police presence in great numbers with no relief from danger amid general harassment by the law is a constant.
It is an occupation that is remarkably similar to what Arab Palestinians endure in the West Bank. For a while Chicago police would set up checkpoints forcing everyone in a car or even walking on the sidewalk to be interrogated. Gang violence began in the mid 20th century to add to the woe with no effective response to date. Even the current call for uniformed policing to be accompanied by social workers is nothing new.
Efforts have not been lacking by the residents, including the Black Panthers who at one point were working to get gangs to come together to help the people. A very significant change came when Ralph Metcalfe was able to rally the people to vote against the Democratic machine of Mayor Daley resulting in the recognition of black Chicago as a political constituency that had to be addressed.
I was shocked when Balto relates the fact that the 1968 police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago lives in history, but few know that though that event resulted in no serious injuries or deaths, during that year nearly a dozen blacks were killed by police and in the two years that followed the Chicago police killed 58 blacks, none of these lives having a notable place in history. I checked and found that in 2020, 753 murders have occurred in Chicago, the majority of the victims being black.
This appalling number results from the gang violence that continues to plague black Chicago as the overall population of the city continues to drop and the budgets of both the city and Illinois have become buried in debt, in Chicago primarily for police pensions. Crowded tenements have been replaced by open lots owned by the city. Anyone can see the result by walking though areas of the west and south sides of the city on Streetview.
Like other white people in the Chicago area, throughout my life I have had the luxury of choosing where I wish to live and ignoring the plight of so many people with dark skin who have been trapped, exploited and victimized. The case has always been the same one and should be put in capital letters: BLACK LIVES MATTER.
It is the modern technology of video cameras that has made the situation clear to all Americans. We can now see for ourselves what has always been the case of police abuse of helpless people. It can no longer be denied or ignored and is a source of national shame that Simon Balto lets us know is nothing new.
You might investigate Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings (MASK), a group to which I contribute.
August 22, 2022
So much racism and it's not getting better.
Simon Balto has laid it all out here and I am not a good enough review writer to give him the amount of praise he deserves. This has to be a classic of social studies literature. Racism is a disturbing topic, corrupt abusive cops are hard to stomach and succesive governments doing nothing to alleviate the problem make you wonder how collectively stupid the human species is.
A brilliant book.
Simon Balto has laid it all out here and I am not a good enough review writer to give him the amount of praise he deserves. This has to be a classic of social studies literature. Racism is a disturbing topic, corrupt abusive cops are hard to stomach and succesive governments doing nothing to alleviate the problem make you wonder how collectively stupid the human species is.
A brilliant book.
June 6, 2020
I must note that the author is my cousin and a wonderful human being in addition to an excellent historian. This book was dense with facts but a great read, and unfortunately increasingly relevant to our current moment in history. Must read.
October 6, 2025
Plenty of reference material, but extremely slow-paced, almost felt like trying to read a textbook. Important topic and thorough documentation make the pacing forgivable.
January 21, 2021
Simon Balto, a professor of history from The University of Iowa, is an exceptionally skilled author. ‘Occupied Territory,’ provide a deeply informed perspective regarding the history of policing in Chicago. Having read Ghettoside, The Biography of Malcom X, The Trumpets Sound, invisible Man, and numerous other books regarding racial history in America I found Balto’s book to rate among the very best.
There is so much we assume about the plight of others in the world as a function of our inherent bias grounded in our personal life experiences. Professor Balto achieves what only the greatest educators and authors manage with a book that imbues empathy and wisdom in the aspiring seeker of both. You will have a new appreciation for your fellow man in the context of that man’s suffering and be able to appreciate the nuances of racism as never before. An absolute must for the bookshelves of all libraries and classrooms.
There is so much we assume about the plight of others in the world as a function of our inherent bias grounded in our personal life experiences. Professor Balto achieves what only the greatest educators and authors manage with a book that imbues empathy and wisdom in the aspiring seeker of both. You will have a new appreciation for your fellow man in the context of that man’s suffering and be able to appreciate the nuances of racism as never before. An absolute must for the bookshelves of all libraries and classrooms.
December 30, 2020
This is honestly the most important book I've read this year and in some time. It traces the history of the Chicago Police Department and its (mostly hostile) relationship with the Black community until the mid 70s. I felt the author was using Chicago as a microcosm to look at trends in policing in many northern metropolises. It's well sourced and the history ties into the BLM movement of today and the backlash against it.
January 10, 2024
Wow. This one was a doozy. i love reading about chicago, despite how depressing it can be. This book was published in 2019 so I’m super interested in to what degree policing in chicago changed from what is chronicled in this book to after George Floyd’s murder/what’s in place today. overall a wholehearted affirmation of the need to disinvest in police and instead put our money toward community-controlled policing, uplift, and freedom.
Here is my annotated bibliography entry for my capstone if you care to read:
In his recounting of the sordid history of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and its violent occupation of Black Chicago over the course of five decades, Simon Balto argues that local-level policing had already become “racialized, discriminatory, and punitive” by the onset of the late twentieth-century Wars on Crime and Drugs. Beginning with the 1919 race riot and moving chronologically to the CPD’s 1969 murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Balto details how white economic and political interests motivated the CPD to systematically disadvantage, criminalize, and wholly oppress Black Chicagoans. Balto simultaneously describes the rising power of Chicago’s Democratic machine, which all but ignored Black community calls for social investment, instead opting to funnel billions more dollars into an increasingly punitive apparatus, thereby appealing to white voters and social elites. Overall, Balto’s history demonstrates two patterns: Black Chicagoans being “overpoliced and underprotected,” and police’s lack of efficacy in reducing crime when social investment is absent from government spending priorities. Balto’s research is incredibly relevant to my own in that it illuminates the shortsightedness of Chicago’s crime control measures which I hope to investigate further.
Here is my annotated bibliography entry for my capstone if you care to read:
In his recounting of the sordid history of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and its violent occupation of Black Chicago over the course of five decades, Simon Balto argues that local-level policing had already become “racialized, discriminatory, and punitive” by the onset of the late twentieth-century Wars on Crime and Drugs. Beginning with the 1919 race riot and moving chronologically to the CPD’s 1969 murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Balto details how white economic and political interests motivated the CPD to systematically disadvantage, criminalize, and wholly oppress Black Chicagoans. Balto simultaneously describes the rising power of Chicago’s Democratic machine, which all but ignored Black community calls for social investment, instead opting to funnel billions more dollars into an increasingly punitive apparatus, thereby appealing to white voters and social elites. Overall, Balto’s history demonstrates two patterns: Black Chicagoans being “overpoliced and underprotected,” and police’s lack of efficacy in reducing crime when social investment is absent from government spending priorities. Balto’s research is incredibly relevant to my own in that it illuminates the shortsightedness of Chicago’s crime control measures which I hope to investigate further.
September 19, 2019
This heavily researched book gives an exhaustive history of police oppression of Black and Brown folks in Chicago, IL. I did not know that slavery was legal in IL, up until 1848.
AND THEN, the Black Code of 1853 prohibited any Black persons from outside of the state from staying in the state for more than ten days, subjecting Black emigrants who remain beyond the ten days to arrest, detention, a $50 fine, or deportation. So, law enforcement has a long history of discrimination in Chicago.
CPD has been murdering unarmed Blackfolks for centuries, with no sign of slowdown. The stories listed in Occupied Territory are enough to make your teeth curl with rage.
Recommended for those who don't understand why huge segments of the population have a problem and/or deep fear of the police. Police are supposed to protect and serve, but they don't protect and serve everyone equally...
AND THEN, the Black Code of 1853 prohibited any Black persons from outside of the state from staying in the state for more than ten days, subjecting Black emigrants who remain beyond the ten days to arrest, detention, a $50 fine, or deportation. So, law enforcement has a long history of discrimination in Chicago.
CPD has been murdering unarmed Blackfolks for centuries, with no sign of slowdown. The stories listed in Occupied Territory are enough to make your teeth curl with rage.
Recommended for those who don't understand why huge segments of the population have a problem and/or deep fear of the police. Police are supposed to protect and serve, but they don't protect and serve everyone equally...
October 23, 2020
WOW! Hot damn! One of the best written and best researched history books I've ever read. Wow!
Balto has conducted an absolutely astonishing work of historical scholarship with this text, putting on display the long and brutal history of the violence of the Chicago Police Department, and how it has always operated as a mechanism to control and abuse Black people in Chicago. From the Red Summer of 1919, through the Great Depression, the early post-war era, through the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Balto shows how the viciousness and brutality of the CPD are nothing imported or imposed by Washington, but wholly home grown, meant to blunt and beat down attempts at a growing black power in the city. As a proud resident of the Chicago area, this book is required reading. Unbelievably prescient and timely. Highly, highly recommend.
Balto has conducted an absolutely astonishing work of historical scholarship with this text, putting on display the long and brutal history of the violence of the Chicago Police Department, and how it has always operated as a mechanism to control and abuse Black people in Chicago. From the Red Summer of 1919, through the Great Depression, the early post-war era, through the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Balto shows how the viciousness and brutality of the CPD are nothing imported or imposed by Washington, but wholly home grown, meant to blunt and beat down attempts at a growing black power in the city. As a proud resident of the Chicago area, this book is required reading. Unbelievably prescient and timely. Highly, highly recommend.
February 26, 2021
This is probably one of the best books I've ever read on policing. Balto breaks down how police forces look at the city: how they have historically tried to guard certain (rich, white) sections of the city at the cost of pushing crime into other sections; how certain forms of policing, particularly gang policing, can actually exacerbate violence; how professionalization of policing can be a cover for ratcheting up police violence across the board. I think about this book basically every time I read a newspaper. Highly recommend it.
January 15, 2021
This was a great read and would recommend it to folks trying to expand their understanding of policing in the United States in general and in Chicago more specifically. It reads like a history book at times, but it is by no means a dense, academic text that inhibits many of us from absorbing. This book offered a fresh perspective of policing in Chicago before what most people would consider the carceral turn.
October 31, 2022
A lot of this book felt like an author trying to sound academic versus really wanting to educate. The argument of "policy over people" being the Chicago PD's main objective is thought provoking and, through Balto's examples, is very well accurate.
It's a case study of one city, but I do wish Balto had spent time analyzing this argument as a national theme/trend versus relaying Chicago history and ending there.
May 25, 2024
An extremely important and timely read. You can tell this book, with all its historical research and policy information, was a labor of love for the author. I am immensely grateful this book is in the world.
The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because the book was difficult to read (it reads like an academic textbook). I understand it's a complex and heavy topic, however, using complex language makes this book inaccessible to many.
The only reason I didn't give 5 stars is because the book was difficult to read (it reads like an academic textbook). I understand it's a complex and heavy topic, however, using complex language makes this book inaccessible to many.
February 5, 2024
The writing and history is well in depth about the ways that Chicago was made to be an occupied territory. Black people in Chicago are still targeted and threatened everyday, which is just a continuation from Chicago's founding. The police routinely are the enemy, when they are supposed to protect the ones they target. How long until the system is changed...
June 1, 2020
Important, (sadly) timely, and deeply researched. Strongly recommended for history teachers.
August 15, 2020
Well researched and very interesting, especially as a Chicagoan in 2020.
October 31, 2020
A powerful and necessary read.
March 7, 2020
Biased, reading
I no sooner completed the introduction of this book when I saw quotations from former Afro American patrolman association president Howard Saffold. Without expounding, I have known Saffold to have the intelligence of a flea and therefore returned this book if further attribution was of this caliber.
I no sooner completed the introduction of this book when I saw quotations from former Afro American patrolman association president Howard Saffold. Without expounding, I have known Saffold to have the intelligence of a flea and therefore returned this book if further attribution was of this caliber.
June 3, 2022
There’s a lot I took away from this book, about Chicago specifically, but also, I imagine, a lot of that applies to other cities in the northern US. One line that sticks with me (which is not Balto’s) is this: “in a society without racial justice, the police must head the burden of policing an unjust order,” words from Chicago Urban League activist Bill Berry.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews