Jeffrey S. Adler Livres

The book explores the transformative impact of the slavery debate on the urban West, highlighting how conflicts surrounding this issue reshaped cities and communities. It delves into the social, political, and economic changes that arose from these tensions, illustrating the complex interplay between regional identities and the national discourse on slavery. Through detailed analysis, it reveals how these conflicts not only influenced local dynamics but also contributed to the broader historical narrative of the United States.

Set against the backdrop of 1920s and 1930s New Orleans, the book delves into the city's alarming homicide rates, significantly higher than those of major cities like New York and Boston. Jeffrey S. Adler meticulously examines over two thousand homicide cases, utilizing police reports, autopsies, and historical records. Beyond mere statistics, he contextualizes these crimes within the frameworks of racism, urban violence, and policing practices, revealing insights that resonate with contemporary societal issues.

A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States. Too often, scholars and pundits argue either that police violence against African Americans has remained unchanged since the era of slavery or that it is a recent phenomenon and disconnected from the past. Neither view is accurate. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show, in narrative detail, how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans. Wide racial differentials in the use of lethal force and beatings during arrest and interrogation emerged in the 1930s and 1940s. Adler explains how race control and crime control blended and blurred during this era, when police officers and criminal justice officials began to justify systemic violence against Black people as a crucial—and legal—tool for maintaining law and order. Bluecoated Terror explores both the rise of these law-enforcement trends and their chilling resilience, providing critical context for recent horrific police abuses as the ghost of Jim Crow law enforcement continues to haunt the nation.