Policing after Slavery: Race, Crime, and Resistance in Atlanta

By Jonathon J. Booth

This Article places the birth and growth of the Atlanta police in context by exploring the full scope of Atlanta’s criminal legal system during the four decades after the end of slavery. To do so, it analyzes the connections Atlantans made between race and crime, the adjudication and punishment of minor offenses, and the variety of Black protests against the criminal legal system. This Article is based, in part, on a variety of archival sources, including decades of arrest and prosecution data that, for the first time, allow for a quantitative assessment of the impact of the new system of policing on Atlanta’s residents.

This Article breaks new ground in four ways. First, it demonstrates that rather than simply maintaining the social relations of slavery, Atlanta’s police force responded to the challenges of freedom: it was designed to maintain White supremacy in an urban space in which residents, theoretically, had equal rights. Second, it shows that White citizens’ beliefs about the causes of crime and the connections between race and crime, which I call “lay criminology,” influenced policing strategies. Third, it adds a new layer to our understanding of the history of order-maintenance policing by showing that mass criminalization for minor offenses such as disorderly conduct began soon after emancipation. This type of policing caused a variety of harms to the city’s Black residents, forcing thousands each year to pay fines or labor for weeks on the chain gang. Fourth, it shows that the complaints of biased and brutal policing that animate contemporary police reform activism have been present for a century and a half. In the decades after emancipation, Atlanta’s Black residents, across class lines, protested the racist criminal legal system and police abuses, while envisioning a more equitable city where improved social conditions would reduce crime.

University of Colorado Law Review Volume 96 Issue 1 Article 1 2025