Name: Policing Blackness: Resisting Repression, Police Violence, and Surveillance
Start: 2026-02-05T18:30:00-05:00
End: 2026-02-05T20:00:00-05:00
Location: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Policing Blackness: Resisting Repression, Police Violence, and Surveillance

CBFS: Scholars discuss the history and effects of American policing as it relates to Blackness. An in-person event.
About this Event

This Black History Month, please join us on February 5th for an event on Policing Blackness: Resisting Repression, Police Violence, and Surveillance. Brittany Friedman will present on a critical new text Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons. Aaron G. Fountain will discuss High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America, connecting struggles over policing and education. Joshua Clark Davis will share research from Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back, expanding our understanding of repression beyond COINTELPRO. Finally, LaShawn Harris will teach about the life of Eleanor Bumpurs, which she powerfully illuminates in Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City. This will be an in-person event at the Schomburg Center and live-streamed on youtube.

ABOUT CONVERSATIONS IN BLACK FREEDOM STUDIES

The founding curators of this series, Professors Jeanne Theoharis (Brooklyn College/CUNY) and Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), introduced a new paradigm that challenged the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture and chronology of Civil Rights historiography. Jeanne Theoharis continues in her role and is joined by Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine (Wayne State University) ) as co-curator. Komozi Woodard continues to advise the series from an emeritus position. Discussions take place on the first Thursday of each month.

Learn more: http://www.blackfreedomstudies.org

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

ACCESSIBILITY | Live captioning is available for streaming programs. ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing [email protected].

PRESS | Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at [email protected]. Please note that professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

Conversations in Black Freedom Studies is supported by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Additional support provided by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.