America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

by Elizabeth Hinton

What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors—and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.


Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton’s sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. As she suggests, if rebellion and the conditions that precipitated it never disappeared, the optimistic story of a post–Jim Crow United States no longer holds.


Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Crime,” sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California.


The central lesson from these eruptions—that police violence invariably leads to community violence—continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing underlying socioeconomic causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s enduring strife, America on Fire is also a warning: rebellions will surely continue unless police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, Social Justice, American History, Crime

432 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2021

About the author

Elizabeth Hinton is Assistant Professor in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in the 20th century United States, while her current scholarship considers the transformation of domestic social programs and urban policing after the Civil Rights Movement. She has written for the Journal of American History, the Journal of Urban History, and Time. She also co-edited The New Black History: Revisiting the Second Reconstruction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) with the late historian Manning Marable.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.” ~Lyndon B. Johnson, commenting on the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, 1968

In 1968, under then President Lyndon Johnson, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, commonly referred to as the Kerner Commission, apprised government officials and lawmakers that any prospect of racial equity in America would be solely dependent on investment. The commission warned that, without the financial wherewithal, black communities were destined for a continuous and perpetual cycle of racial inequity.

“…time and time again, the decision was made to pursue a set of policies that were self-defeating at best, and grievously harmful at worst.”

Elizabeth Hinton’s America On Fire is a hard but crucially necessary lesson in American history. Spanning some sixty years, from 1960 to 2020, Hinton chronicles the repetitious political ineptitude of U.S. race relations.

1960s/1970s: Often under laws and ordinances that would never have been enforced in white communities (“fitting the description,” gathering in groups of two or more, “responding to a tip,” etc.), American cities and townships established an incarceration pipeline for black citizens via a recurring pattern of over-policing.

Hinton lays out the pattern: White over-policing breeds Black animosity. Black animosity generates Black grievances. Black grievances are met with White indifference. White indifference fuels Black rebellion. Black rebellion is countered with White retaliation. White retaliation results in Black people dying. Black people dying leads to (with no eye witnesses) White police officer exoneration, or (with lots of eye witnesses) White police officer acquittal. All of this leads to continued over-policing of Black communities and the cycle begins again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

“Now we know where we stand… and it’s at the bottom. We will act accordingly…” ~Horace B. Livingston Jr, Decatur Association for Black Action, 1968

An exhaustive analysis of every Black rebellion in America would have required volumes and volumes (in her notes Hinton references over 2,000 separate demonstrations, uprisings and outright revolts). Mercifully, no doubt in the interest of brevity and sanity, Hinton has limited AOF to a mere 382 pages - just enough to give her readers a sense of the enormity of the problem.

Solutions? Hinton makes it abundantly clear that the solution has been with us all along. Starting with Johnson’s Kerner Commission, the recommendations were there. We cannot invest a pittance in the communities and then roll barrels of cash into policing and prisons and expect conditions to improve. History has shown (see the notes for over 2,000 examples) that American leadership, read ‘majority white political leadership,’ has had its head up its proverbial ass for fifty+ years (and counting).

_________________________________________

The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smiths...

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I read this year. I've had it since November or maybe even earlier but fear of being upset kept me from reading it. That fear was justified.

The facts and events in this book are nothing short of nauseating, as is the senseless hatred Black people endure in America. Hinton doesn't let up, she doesn't let you breathe, and how could she when the problem never gets better? It was nothing but an infinite cycle of mistreatment, rebellions, and inaction in the aftermath.

I was more depressed at the end of the book than ever before after reading Hinton's conclusion and analysis of America's governmental failure. That being said, this will definitely become the book I recommend above anything else.

If you want to understand Black people's relationship with police? With America? With the supposed justice system? Here you go.

Quotes that struck me:

"They implied that 'derogatory remarks' directed at the police justified violent retaliation even as they deemed Black violence in response to abusive policing entirely illegitimate." (p.186)

"Individual officers behaved as they did because they had been trained and conditioned by a racist system" (p.189)

"Koen understood perhaps better than anyone else that the sustained violence against Black people in Cairo in the past decade led to the slow death of the city consumed by its own racism" (p.196)

"For at least 3 minutes...the officers viciously assaulted him [Arthur McDuffie] with heavy 18 inch flashlights. McDuffie died several days afterward. As the coroner would later testify, they had shattered his skull, inflicting injuries equivalent to 'falling from a 4 story building and landing headfirst...on concrete'" (p.209)

19 year old man after not guilty verdict in Arthur McDuffie trial: "We watched the trial every night. All those pictures and descriptions explaining how they beat the man to death, and they found those guys guilty of nothing? Not nothing? That's like saying the man didn't die" (p.210)

Willa J: "Black people have a right to hate. They really have a right. It's so many things these people do and get by with it. So many years they beat up poor people you'd think it would get better, but it's no better" (p.219)

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good as history, but I'm less sympathetic to the activism of some of this book. Let me start with the history. I though I knew what this book would be about: Watts, Newark, DC, etc: the major riots/uprisings in major cities in the 1960s. But no! It was more unexpected and interesting than that. Hinton instead showed in great depth and vividness how uprisings occurred in medium and small cities across the country, focusing especially on Cairo Illinois, Harrisburg PA, and Miami, FL. She shows how it makes a lot of sense to think of these as uprisings with a political bent as opposed to mere pointless violence or expressions of rage. In places like Cairo, black people were shunted into dilapidated housing, denied opportunities and good schools, and policed totally differently from white people. Relatively small incidents within these powder keg situations could lead to explosions of violence, which whites and blacks waging borderline guerrilla warfare against each other. Again, this was not a big-city-only thing but a nationwide phenomenon in the late 60s and early 70s, stemming from the sense of disappointment that Civil Rights didn't transform people's daily lives, the continued racial exclusion and oppression of pretty much any locality in the nation, the overt hostility of most police forces, and the rise of a black power mentality of confrontation.

Hinton explores these dynamics not just in cities but in a brilliant chapter on protest and violence in the public schools. She's very honest that these were very violent episodes, with both sides employing severe and sometimes random violence. I think she downplays that in every uprising there is going to be lawless opportunism: people stealing and attacking others for non-political reasons. I think she makes her case that there was a semi-strategic aspect to the riots (using them as a pressure point in a struggle with recalcitrant authorities), but if they were a cry of the oppressed they were a rather inchoate cry. I also think she overlooks a recurring trend in these riots: that they set back rather than advance the cause of black rights and equality (Hispanic too, as they are also featured in this book). White authorities' and populations' reactions to uprisings/riots is almost always fear and a desire for security; either that or they flee into suburbs and private schools. This happens over and over and over again. The anger and dispossession behind the uprisings are understandable. If I lived in the conditions of the black population of Cairo or Newark or so many of these places I would probably act similarly. But these events clearly just hand political tools to the right to play up fears of chaos, to play to stereotypes, and to shift resources into security rather than investment in these communities. I'm not justifying those reactions, but when they happen over and over again (think Trump), you might want to avoid justifying them, and Hinton's book is right on that line between justifying and explaining (to be fair, a lot of historians walk that line, including me).

Hinton has 2 later chapters where she shows a better way regarding how to deal with police violence and black uprisings. In Cincinnati, after repeated failed efforts at peaceful reform, a major riot in the early 2000s got more federal attention, which led to significant reforms. That was probably the clearest example of a riot acting as leverage to reform a stubborn system. Even more interesting was a chapter on the truce between the Bloods and Crips in LA in the early 1990s. This showed the potential for community-level policing and investment, although it didn't last in large part because the LAPD didn't follow up on its potential.

Ok, now 2 critiques. I think this book is outstanding as history, and I learned a lot. However, I like to keep my history and activism separate, and that's where I found problems here. The first problem is that Hinton pretty much dismisses the idea of "liberal reform" as being meaningful as a solution, seeing it as too moderate. The alternative (as usual) isn't spelled out, but I think she's looking for more revolutionary "Defund the Police" type action. However, she then goes on to hold up places like Cincinnati as cases where reform did make a difference, and at the end of the book when she calls for investment in communities' educational and economic growth, she is literally talking about liberal reform. Political mobilization is ultimately the only solution to continued racial marginalization and oppression, and Hinton's mixed messages on that point aren't helpful.

Lastly, Hinton tries to portray peaceful political action and violent revolt as 2 sides of the same strategic coin. There's an element of truth in this; Hinton argues that even King said that the specter of violence from the Malcolm X types helped further peaceful Civil Rights advances. There are also several problems though. The first is that there's an ethical line between peaceful action and violence. Hinton quotes King selectively here, ignoring the many times he said that the ends do not justify the means, that violent or immoral means discredit and corrupt their ends. This was why MLK's non-violence was not merely a strategic choice but a deeply held moral principle. I understand why people became frustrated with non-violence and turned to violence, but that doesn't mean that was right or effective.

The second problem is that you don't ever want to justify violence as part of the political process, even if that violence is committed by people from a marginalized population. The dominant population is not going to say "you know what, those people are marginalized and oppressed, so we are going to understand their violence but not turn to violence ourselves." That's not going to happen. Instead, at least a significant portion of that dominant population is going to say that they can/must now use violence in response. In many cases, as this book shows, they already were using violence, often in a legitimized form through the police. But when you open that door for one group, you effectively open it for all, which is why I always condemn violence in the name of politics, especially when there actually are political channels to pursue change through, no matter how frustrating and slow those channels might be. Just as an illustration, Hinton rhetorically downplays violence against property not as violence but as vandalism. But for the people who lose their businesses, their property, and their investments, things they worked long and hard for, to looting and wanton destruction, that's truly an academic difference, and they are going to lose any sympathy for the group doing the destruction. When it comes to academics playing footsy with political violence, I always wonder: how would you feel if it came to your neighborhood one night?

In short, great history but questionable politics define this book. Recommended for those interested in policing, race, local gov't issues, and the origins of many of our current problems.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a vital book to help put the last year-plus of protests and Black Lives Matter activism in context. A lot of the discussions we've been having about the role of the police in the U.S., we already had in the 1960s and 1970s—and it's worthwhile seeing what the results were so we don't repeat them, as we (slowly, and haltingly) try to build a better America. I had never heard of most of the incidents described in the book (the unrest in L.A. after the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King being the exception), and I think there's a reason the common narrative around police protests has been disappeared like this. It's convenient to pretend that we've never been here, when we could learn from our past mistakes and do better.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 2 out of 5]

America on Fire is a strange but ambitious book. Hinton uses a great deal of anecdotal material from archives and contemporary accounts to track violent interactions between police and people of color from the 1960s to the present.

Her main conceit or thesis is that the violent uprisings of Black people in the late 1960s and early 1970s generally referred to as "riots" in popular parlance should actually be understood as "rebellions," insofar as they were driven by political motives and ambitions. But it’s not clear what the redefinition of riot to rebellion is supposed to portend, except that the author predicts further rebellions in the absence of addressing what a thousand civil rights commissions have identified as the root causes (lower quality or lack of housing, education, jobs, etc. for Black communities). So we call them rebellions--so what? I think the point is that riots are criminal in nature and need a police response, whereas rebellions demand a political response involving more than just law and order. Hinton did not convince me that the nomenclature change on which she insists is meaningful.

A secondary thesis is that overpolicing exacerbates if not actually causes violence. For this thesis, Hinton does produce some evidence, and yet the tragedy she best illustrates is the fact that the failure of nearly every community to use a strategy other than escalation and overpolicing leaves us all without a basis of comparison to see how things might have been had the root causes been addressed instead.

There are some mis-steps. For example, after introducing the thesis that the police cause violence, her first anecdotal example is the people being policed initiating violence with rock-throwing. Also, Hinton seems to dismiss the importance of police being available to address fist fights, low level theft, and domestic violence. The community should address these issues, she suggests, but doesn’t offer mechanisms for doing so, nor does she address what happens if the "community" is overrun by bad actors or perpetrators or others less interested in addressing these conflicts. To whom are victims of these crimes to appeal?

With her focus on some of the "rebellions" in smaller cities and not just the more famous big city violence, Hinton very clearly makes one key point over and over: the nation has vastly over-invested in police and under-invested in developing community, jobs, and education--and we continue to do so today. This dynamic is laid out in nauseating detail.

[Kama · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think NWA put it best.

[Darryle B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This eye opening book should be included in every history class and discussion today when it comes to how police reforms are addressed. This is especially when it comes to interactions with the African-American community in a manner in which it can finally bridge the gap of distrust, systemic abuses or use of force, and negative perceptions that are rooted in long held dehumanizing atrocities committed in America. They come with deep rooted origins stemming from Jim Crow/Segregation, not only in the South but also in the North in most of its major metropolitan cities.

This book provides a broader understanding of why the rebellion existed and continues to exist in the African-American community and other minority community that have historically faced race targeting vigilante patrols, abuse of police powers and misconduct and broken criminal justice system that is rarely fair across the board for all Americans. Police abuses, misconduct and excessive force and African-American rebellion stemming from it is not new. (I should know. I was in law enforcement for 20 years some of which was in Internal Affairs). The book also identifies "legalized" vigilantism and domestic terrorism that served only to fuel the fires of rebellion and made matters worse under the guise of the "War on Crime".

Tragic stories like these in America's history remain untold because of a willfully uneducated society that chooses to downplay, excuse, omits and/or are untruthful about America's ugly past. In theory, there are those who have benefitted from and/or actively engaged in the oppression of minorities, particularly African-Americans which explains why great lengths have been to keep these tragedies from being taught in schools so that our society can live a lie. Those are the kind of rebellions serve as an ugly reminder that America has failed to live up to its principles time and time again, especially when it comes to the culture of law enforcement and the equality and fairness of the criminal justice system for certain Americans. Perhaps that is why in the minds of those who benefitted from it must keep this history concealed.

Even decades after the Civil Rights Movement, this book highlights how and why American society has been in this awful predicament of racial discord, inequality, prejudice and stereotyping that has systematically targeted the African-American community while not affording them the same freedoms and opportunities taken for granted by other Americans. ANY American in the same predicament would also rebel.

Law enforcement can do better and earn the trust of their communities to help put out the "fires" of distrust, corruption, excessive force, profiling and stereotyping, and holding accountable those officers who do not. It starts by learning from the shameful, ugly and untold history of America's past. Even more so, being better as well as doing better in treating all Americans with respect and dignity. It takes people of strength, character and wisdom to do so which is desperately needed in today's law enforcement. This book is highly recommended for all cops and our society as a whole so that we can become better citizens to each other, becoming the America we should be.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received as a digital advance readers copy from Edelweiss. Hinton traces the history of rebellions in the face of police and white citizen violence against black populations. The cycle is familiar. Protest, Commissions give recommendations, and then nothing is enforced and things settle until the next death brings more protests and the cycle repeats. The introduction and first few chapters are a bit fragmented but it quickly comes together.

[Victoria Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect book to read alongside or just after reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste.

[Willie Kirschner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book reminding us that despite the protests and Commissions that have been appointed to investigate them from the 60’s to today, very little has been done to fix the underlying conditions which have led to these acts of rebellion. Instead, our country and it’s police and political leaders have reacted with force and violence which has only made the situation worse and has created even more violence and given us a huge problem of systemic racism and over incarceration. Ms. Hinton does a good job making her point and reminds those of us who have demonstrated and acted for a more humane society that the struggle continues and is a long way from being solved,

[Kemp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t rate this book like the majority seem to. It’s a useful and difficult topic that we all should understand but laundry lists of historical events just don’t make an interesting read for me. Think primary school history books.

What would make it more interesting is if we could have heard from a few who lived through this period and experienced it. What were their feelings, frustrations, and fears? A story that weaves individual plights creates a more compelling read.

I also wanted to hear solutions and insights. Maybe I’ve to come up with my own. America’s history of minority persecution seems so well intrenched that today’s events flow naturally from our DNA. I should not be surprised by the anger, rhetoric, and violence in today’s politized environment.

[Anna Pardue · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was hard to get through, not because of the subject matter, but simply because it was presented like an onslaught of news headlines. There was no one story to catch and hold my attention; it just came across as a timeline of similar events. I would have much preferred to read about one, or even a handful of meaningful events that had some kind of significant historical or political impact. There was just too much crammed into one book and it all started to sound like the same story.

[Laurel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to rate this book. The content is important and gave a fantastic historical perspective on the treatment (or mistreatment, rather) of Black lives in America. However, the delivery felt dry and cold. I had hoped for personalization of the experiences to more deeply connect. The conclusions drawn by the author were spot on and powerful.

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind but it seemed so repetitive. I abandoned this book.

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this book’s subtitle is a bit misleading because it’s tough to believe any “untold history” is only 300 pages long, and while I’m well educated on the abject hypocrisy of systemic racism in the United States, a nation carved from the backs of Africans on lands stolen from the indigenous, Dr. Hinton’s book reads as a fractal kaleidoscope of episodic illustrations meant to reinforce the fact that our police forces have been historically undertrained, undervalued, underpaid, and (and this is her main point) infected with racism, xenophobia, classism, and toxic brutality. This book is a timeline from 1964 to now, with the Chauvin conviction being one microscopic LED light of the endless river of blood. Scene after scene illustrates Black or Brown kids playing outside, White cop shows up to intimidate/humiliate/etc., said kids do something dumb, situation escalates, a crowd forms, cop calls for reinforcements, reinforcements show up with riot gear and the pervasive “Us vs. Them” psychology, hell breaks loose, people die. Now don’t get your undies in a bunch; police are a crucial necessity for public safety and so many police officers are good, noble, honest, and caring protectors of the peace; however, as we all know now after many decades of watching videos of Black and Brown bodies get beaten, brutalized, and murdered in cold blood by fear-and-rage-fueled White cops, police departments have become more and more militarized since the late 1960s (and more so after 9/11), and their mentality has been one of increasing militarization, infused with that entrenched “Us vs. Them” psychology and the pathologized, dehumanizing criminalization of Black and Brown and Red bodies, with “them” being just about anyone not White, Christian, Republican, and middle-class & above.

Yes, we have a titanic crime problem in the United States of Inequality; yes, we have a self-destructive proliferation of firearms problem in the United States of Stupidity; and yes, we have a seemingly unfixable police problem in the United States of Hypocrisy. From the Kerner Commission’s report of 1968 (http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/d...) to today, we know that drastic paradigm shifts need to happen, and yet decade after decade, mayors and governors and Presidents after Presidents and governors and mayors, those in power refuse to dedicate the necessary time, money, and human capital into what truly needs to be done in order to transform communities in fundamentally proactive and empowering ways: to destroy systemic racism; to overhaul the tax system and make the filthy rich pay their fair share; to train and educate viable community-grown police officers; to mandate that quality healthcare and education are universal human rights; to have affordable, livable housing for all; and, to create innumerable opportunities for education and living-wage employment for all citizens, most especially for those in the lowest tax brackets, and even more especially for women in the lowest tax brackets.

“Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans.

What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” This was fact in the 1960s as much as it is now.

Systemic changes need to happen, and “defund the police” was a horrible slogan the media outlets dog-piled on, but I’m not going to bother with my insights because this is my last book review for Amazon-owned Goodreads, and it really doesn’t matter. Ishmael Reed called the current trend in anti-racism work the new yoga for suburban Whites. Sensitivity training doesn’t work, and deprogramming racism is a terribly tough task. I think Reed has a point, and I hope to read all of his work in time. On another front, the Kiwi metal band Antagonist A.D. recently released a song aptly titled “The System is Racist and Oppressive” (https://wallofsoundau.com/2021/03/12/...). Of course this is from a First Nations’ lens, but it encapsulates global hypocrisy well enough. Perhaps Body Count’s “No Lives Matter” nails the point home better (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlk7o...). I’ll see them at Aftershock this October, hopefully, wearing a mask the entire time, because this country is filled with too many idiots (https://lithub.com/a-close-reading-of...).

Dr. Hinton was interviewed by Jeremy Scahill for the Intercepted podcast (https://theintercept.com/2021/05/26/a...) and The New Yorker’s preeminent Jelani Cobb interviewed her for LitHub (https://lithub.com/on-juneteenth-and-...).

The Internet is rotting out thanks in large part to an utter lack of oversight and accountability (https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...), knowing full-well how hyperlinks don’t hold for long while still using them to reinforce and expand my review, and I believe the Internet will be the instrument of our unraveling as we collectively lurch ever faster towards Gilead (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...) (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch). If your browser protections don’t block the comments section on Cobb’s LitHub interview, you’ll see McCloskey clones ranting with their Rush Limbaugh / Bill O’Reilly / Alex Jones / Tucker Carlson talking points rooted in GOP horse manure going back to William F. Buckley and his deplorable, elitist ilk. Now the GOP is ruled by cultist sycophants, no-longer anonymous LARP puppeteers, networked disinformation machines, and all of QAnon’s, Fox’s, Infowars’s, OAN’s brainless minions hurling anonymous online death threats at anyone who offends their arrogant ignorance, while the millionaires and billionaires continue to consolidate all the wealth and resources. (Nevermind all the insidious stuff deployed online, most recently revealed as the Pegasus Project now out of the toothpaste tube, and all the bots flooding this site.) The Internet is a minefield we’re all tip-toeing through, but it’s filled with self-replicating and candy-coated landmines while Gaia warms with greater speed and intensity, and I’m exhausted by the dance while so many people just shove their faces into their digital hedonic treadmills of pap and plumage. Humanity is a plague of locusts ravenously consuming all in its way, trapped in the present-bias of self-gratification. No one is innocent.

Take care, be safe, and best of luck to each of you when the whole thing gets torn asunder.

\m/

[Caleb Lagerwey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book adds useful insight into the largely forgotten and unknown story of conflicts between police and black communities from Watts in 1965 to the present with #BLM. Hinton uses in-depth research into specific cities like Cairo, IL and Cincinnati, OH to illustrate that the nation has still not yet learned the lessons of the 1968 Kerner Commission and keeps falling into the same patterns over and over. I appreciated Hinton's scholarly evenhandedness that avoided false equivalencies. She did not excuse the lamentable violence from black communities even as she explained the forces that made it nearly inevitable and certain tragically predictable. She called out racism in the criminal justice and policing systems while pointing out the impossibility of making police do all of the things the modern US foists upon them in the midst of decaying or undermined social, educational, and communal resources. Agreeing with many other books in this genre, Hinton adroitly exposes the need for systemic changes: violence may occur after specific racial incidents, but the ultimate causes are underinvestment in communities of color, despite the heart-breaking examples of residents pleading for improvements in schools, increases in job opportunities, growing business investment, equitable governmental services, etc.

The book dragged a bit in the middle (late-1970s to mid-1980s), and I wish she had spent slightly more time discussing solutions, but that is not really the purview of historians and there are other books with prescriptions for dealing with these systemic issues. Those who recognize the need for systemic change will find useful historical evidence here, and those unfamiliar with systemic problems related to racism and the criminal justice system will be exposed to a usefully corrective narrative.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author’s extensive research and brilliant insight are evident from the very start of this critically important book. This is one of the books that, were it taught in schools and widely read by adults, would change the way protests and dissent are viewed in the public eye. This is not an easy read by any means due to the emotional impact of the injustice, cruelty and hypocrisy that those in power have inflicted against Black communities across the country and the efforts by those oppressed to obtain the equality and freedom promised to all citizens, but it is so well presented, organized, and written that it never becomes tedious or merely focused on statistics. This is a must read for those who care about social justice and ending the rule of white supremacy and the systemic racism that is its legacy.

[Ted Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the dominant language, we don't have a unbaggaged word to describe what happened in urban centers in the 60's-70's. Instead, we use the word "riots."

Elizabeth Hinton changes the angle, and lets us see what happened before these so-called "riots." She makes a convincing case that these were uprisings in response to violence against black (and in the case of Stonewall, gay) communities - violence that was sanctioned by, and in some cases carried out by, white-controlled governments and police forces.

[Philip J Cardella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hinton's blistering path through recent American history by way of rebellion, particularly Black rebellion, is a relentless look at arguably the biggest protest movement in American history, civil rights protest through rebellion. Often labeled "riots" by white politicians and citizens, Hinton convincingly argues that these crucial events in American history are a form of political speech that is effective and almost always predicated by police misconduct, overreach, strategy, and brutality. The book is a must-read for anyone trying to understand America in the 2020s and beyond.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hinton uses the word "rebellion" to describe many incidents which are at their heart little more than anarchic lawlessness - they just happen to have been committed by black Americans with the protections of what liberal "wokeness" that has been woven into the story. I probably ought to look into what the Dept of Justice has to say in its policy documents about sedition and rebellion and then follow where the story goes over the next few years. I suspect that even few Black Americans really want their efforts lumped into the rebellion column - they've stuck with liberty and freedom long enough to appreciate what has come to us by way of Western civilization that giving it all up might be a "bridge too far." If I'm wrong I shall likely go to my grave bemoaning all we've lost in the last generation. Have the police taken liberties to which they are not entitled? Clearly! But we likely ought not throw out the Western baby with the anarchist bath water - if you catch my drift.

[Natalie Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through many historical examples and a thorough analysis focusing on policing and the “justice” system, the author shows how systemic oppression and racism has been a part of society and not surprisingly remains a significant presence today continuing to affect black lives and other people of color.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulls out patterns of police action and communal reaction across decades. And then also corresponding policy violence - despite commissioned, government advice to the contrary - again and again. Along with some of the difference between then and now (though much the same). Grim and necessary.

[G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensively told history of how race, rebellion, and activism have caromed around in the U.S.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important addition to the literature on the uprisings of the Sixties and since, emphasizing the reenforcing cycle of police violence, community anger, community violence, police escalation. Particularly important for emphasizing the huge number of uprisings from 1968-1972, after the Watts, Detroit, Newark, etc. events that usually garner the greatest attention. The problem didn't go away, and it hasn't.

[Sarah Tamsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One among many important books that prove, over and over, Nikole Hannah-Jones’ thesis: Black Americans perfected (and are still perfecting) America’s democracy.

[Carol Kearns · Rating 4 out of 5]

An information-heavy book that gives a new perspective to civil rights unrest and racial oppression from the late 1960’s to present-day. The author looks at gov’t and law enforcement responses to Black citizens’ complaints, vigilantism, and some of the causes of the violent protests in large and small cities alike. She compares the differences and similarities of the 60’s and 70’s to what has happened more recently; the Conclusion is a good summary and expresses what might happen In America’s future.
One thing that stood out to me was the provision of surplus military equipment to our police forces after WW2 and the Vietnam War. Providing the machinery of war to our local law enforcement agencies seemed to cause more damage and death than was necessary in these confrontations; what was meant to quell uprisings and save property led to the escalation of the violence.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Until this nation imagines a different approach to public safety, beyond police reforms, it is not a question of if another person of color will die at the hands of sworn, even well-trained officers, or if another city will catch fire, but when.”

[tessa jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

must read for all

succinct historical summary and analysis with great conclusions, and clearly displays faults in the current liberal order

[John Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This extensive history of the pervasive racism embedded in white society, especially the police departments, sheds glaring light on how deep the problem runs. The deliberate harassment and murdering of African Americans, the repressive living conditions, and abject poverty and inequality of all aspects of society really leaves no choice but rebellion, retaliation, and looting. This is an excellent book and has given me a clearer revelation of the history of racism throughout American history. We continue to make very little progress and that this problem is not going away anytime soon. The more knowledge every person can get and the willingness to keep an open mind is the first tiny baby step in making any progress.

[Colin Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Main Argument
The enduring violence of the 1960s and 1970s lingers today, and it is felt most by Black Americans.

The crucial period of rebellion in the late '60s and ‘70s matters because they define the “freedom struggles, state repression, and violence in Black urban America down into our own time” (12).

Black rebellions are not phenomena that infiltrate white society; they are self-fulfilling prophecies, which is to say, they emerge from within in response to violence, oppression, and segregation, not from without.

Far too often, instead of reforming the police, local, state, and federal governments have invested in them to the detriment of Black people.

Supporting Arguments
Introduction
1. The use of the word “riot” to describe civil discontent is a misnomer. (4)
2. Properly understood, these “riots” were, in fact, rebellions by Black Americans searching for equality. (7)
3. Key: “Violent rebellion offered a means for people of color to express collective solidarity in the face of exploitation, political exclusion, and criminalization” (14).
4. Key: “Rather than contend with the underlying causes, this nation’s leaders further criminalized entire communities, guaranteeing that rebellions would only continue” (15).

Chapter 1: The Cycle
1. The cycle defines this pattern of unnecessary police involvement in daily life that produced a rebellious response. (21)
2. Policing without cause. (24-25)
3. We see in the 1960s and 1970s how a lack of de-escalation tactics only increased violence and rebellion. (30-34)
4. The Black church was a source of advocacy and, when necessary, violent resistance. (40)
5. It was less police presence than how “callous” they seemed to be that caused so many problems (44).
6. Key: “Rebellion was a consequence of the all too predictable presence of the police” (45).

Chapter 2: The Projects
1. We must also consider these rebellions in response to a lack of infrastructure. That is to say, rebellion is an economic response as much as a social one.
2. Once again, the police response only galvanized rebellion; it did not stop it.

Chapter 3: The Vigilantes
1. So Eisenhower was far from an ally. (72-73)
2. Considering the financial benefits many cities received, it is important to remember how culpable the federal government was. (78)
3. The response of white vigilantes was troubling for two reasons, and the most acute was how this violence galvanized Black communities to police and protect themselves, which only increased the perception that Black communities were lawless. (89-90)

Chapter 4: The Snipers
1. By 1968, nonviolence evolved into self-defense. (94)
2. “Sniping” became a term used to describe Black resistance with firearms.
3. Does this period explain why the instincts of the police are suspect? (98)
4. Key: “Self-defense became a means for Black Americans to contest their second-class citizenship” (101).
5. The Black Panthers “police the police” (115-116).
6. Key: “The belief that sniping, or simply Black self-defense, was part of a larger revolutionary conspiracy or an expression of community pathology prevented those in power from imagining alternatives to further escalation of the crime war” (120).

Chapter 5: The Poisoned Tree
1. This chapter explores the ways elite members of Alexandria and structural systems supported violent and abusive law enforcement officials. Instead of these “bad cops” existing in isolation, Hinton articulates how systemic this problem is. That is to say, one “bad cop” often reflects or represents so many more terrible things in a community.
2. Key: “They [Black residents] lived in a city where bad-apple police officers with a history of brutality were lauded as heroes, and where white men could murder Black teenagers without serious repercussions” (142-143)

Chapter 6: The Schools
1. Regarding students’ desire to police themselves in school: “Smith [a Superintendent] and many other school officials in America could not imagine crossing off the police as an option to deal with student unrest” (148).
2. In this era, public schools emerged as “the primary battlegrounds” for racial struggle and equality (149).
3. Key: “Repressive actions by the authorities fueled student rebellion, and student rebellion fueled repressive actions” (152).
4. Schools in the era represent this book’s overarching point about police involvement in Black American communities: Black rebellions are reactive.
5. Again, police violence “had a “galvanizing effect on campus” (164).
6. There is always this assumption that it’s something from outside, not inside. (167)
7. Key: “The schools were but one pillar holding up a larger structure of racial oppression” (168).

Chapter 7: The Commissions
1. Key: “The Plessy decision reduced the ‘race problem’ to mere interpersonal prejudice—to how Black and white people felt about and interacted with one another” (176).
2. Research and watch the propaganda film “Revolution Underway.”

Chapter 8: The System
1. Key: “The mass incarceration of Black Americans that started in the 1970s can be partly attributed to the socioeconomic conditions that lay at the root of the rebellions” (204).
2. Key: “Black Miamians believed their neighborhoods were under siege by police, and they had no one to appeal to for help” (208). This is an important point; the lack of structural help only exacerbates these problems.
3. Key: “The principle of self-defense had guided earlier rebellions, and Black Miamians saw their own violence as a declaration of dignity in the face of unequal conditions and a deeply unjust legal system” (216).

Chapter 9: The Proposal
1. Key: “As in Miami over a decade earlier, the uprising [Los Angeles] was a reaction to systemic injustice rather than a direct response to police violence” (229).
2. Key: “Rising crime and mistrust within communities themselves—exacerbated by federal policies—are factors that generally made rebellion less frequent in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the 2010s” (232).
3. Key: “In stark contrast to most prior rebellions, the collective violence in Los Angeles was multiracial and multiethnic” (234).
4. Regarding the 1972 attempt to end gang violence in Los Angeles: “[they agreed] to organize a broader truce if they were provided with jobs, better schools, and better recreational facilities. These investments never materialized, and so the young people did not hold up to their end of the bargain, either” (238).
5. The police needed gang violence to justify their occupation. (250)
6. Is the solution not a financial intervention but a financial intervention that allows the rebuild itself?
7. Key: “Like in the 1960s and 1970s rebellions, the massive, nationally televised rebellions from 1980 onward were carried out by people who wanted not only an end to police violence, but a chance to rebuild their communities and live their lives on their own terms” (255).

Chapter 10: The Reforms
1. This chapter echoes many of the book’s themes, specifically the importance of community-based reforms that do not involve law enforcement. That is, the chapter explores bottom-up efforts to address inequality.

Conclusion
1. Key: “If nothing else, this book has striven to show that what we’ve long assumed to be urban, Black ‘riots’ were, in fact, rebellions—political acts carried out in response to an unjust and repressive society” (304).
2. Key: “The most effective approaches to crime prevention involve programs that respond to community needs and grant control of public safety to residents, especially in the areas where the state has failed” (307).
3. Key: “Looting and arson push authorities to act” (308).