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This project examines the origins of policing practices during slavery. Beginning in the colonial era, with the first laws governing slavery, this research project demonstrates that contemporary policing has its roots in slavery and the desperate struggle among slaveholders and colonial authorities to control and dominate the enslaved population. Student researchers will examine slavery’s early laws, policies, and practices to illustrate how colonial authorities cultivated a system of surveillance designed to extract labor, loyalty, and submission from the enslaved. They will also explore the complex web of legal codes, patrols, and militias that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to track and govern Black people’s lives, creating a precedent for state policing and social control that has haunted future generations of Black people in America.
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