On June 16, the Historical Society presented “Race and Reform: Police Brutality in DC and Its Consequences,” a conversation with historians George Derek Musgrove and Chris Myers Asch, authors of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, on the history of police brutality and police reform in the city.
"Police Brutality and Reform in DC" is an installment in the DC History Center’s Context for Today series of online conversations with thoughtful and thought-provoking historians, activists, journalists, and community members.
George Derek Musgrove, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. In addition to Chocolate City, Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics: How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post-Civil Rights America (2012). Dr. Musgrove received the 2003-2004 Anne E. Plato predoctoral fellowship at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and the 2007-2008 postdoctoral fellowship in the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University to support his work. He serves on the Editorial Board of Washington History: Magazine of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Chris Myers Asch, Ph.D., a native Washingtonian, teaches history at Colby College and runs the non-profit Capital Area New Mainers Project. He taught with Teach For America in rural Mississippi and co-founded the Sunflower County Freedom Project. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. In addition to Chocolate City, he is the author of The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer (2008). Asch is also the immediate past editor of Washington History and a member of its Editorial Board.
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In 2018-2019 the DC History Center and the National Building Museum collaborated on “Community Policing in the Nation’s Capital Program: The Pilot District Project, 1968-1973,” an exhibit that explored what turned out to be a volatile federal experiment in community-police relations. The Pilot District Project launched in the summer of 1968 with broad goals for police reform and citizen participation in the city’s Third District (now most of Ward 1). The five-year project introduced important innovations that are familiar today: 24-hour police stations, citizen ride-alongs, police sensitivity training, and public bulletin boards to share information about police work. Although community input was sought, it was invited very late.
Many District residents saw the project, led by white federal officials, as an attempt to exert control over black neighborhoods. Yet many of these same residents were active in public meetings and campaigned to sit on the project’s community advisory board. The exhibit featured posters and materials from these campaigns, including those for Marion Barry and his People’s Party, which won 16 of the 28 possible board seats in the first election. It also featured compelling footage of the community and project activities made for a government-commissioned documentary film that was never widely released.
The “Pilot District Project” exhibit introduced visitors to this important and timely story of urban policing, community participation and resilience, and federal intervention.
The Teaching Black Lives Matter at School guide has more information on the Pilot District Project.
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