University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 1-1-2015 Policing, Race, and Politics in Chicago Peter Constantine Pihos University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, Public Policy Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Pihos, Peter Constantine, "Policing, Race, and Politics in Chicago" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1948. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1948 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1948 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Policing, Race, and Politics in Chicago Abstract Policing, Race, and Politics in Chicago asks how local political institutions structured the relationship between race and policing in Chicago. It follows Renault Robinson, the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, and their allies, as they challenged both a political order in which black politicians and voters played critical roles and a Police Department that had the most black officers of any in the United States by the early 1960s. Their cta ivism impelled recognition that Richard J. Daley’s Democratic Party and city government simultaneously incorporated and subordinated black urbanites. Daley’s political monopoly forced the League to seek leverage outside of local electoral politics, through tactics that included citizen monitoring, legal challenges, alliances with state and federal political actors and institutions, and, ultimately, political revolt. The rise of “law and order” among police officers in the mid-1960s was only half of a more complicated story in Chicago. League members challenged their colleagues and the blue wall of silence by working with black communities and police reform activists.