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Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Michael Casiano, "Let Us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore's Police State" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
Description: The racist roots of modern policing in Baltimore
By the early twentieth century, postbellum assaults on civil rights and the advent of Jim Crow expanded Baltimore’s law enforcement into a vast network designed to oppress Black people. Michael Casiano’s history charts the institutional consolidation of the city’s post–Civil War police state.
Authorities in Baltimore organized and established municipal power in distinct but connected sites that included jails, areas of political and social activism, public schools, street corners, courtrooms, and homes. Casiano analyzes policing in light of two parallel and inextricable realities of the c...