African Americans and Law Enforcement in U.S. History A Public History Project

Historians Leanne C. Serbulo and Karen J. Gibson summed up the relationship between the black community and the police that characterizes not only Portland, Oregon but many cities across the country, and adequately described this relationship from a historical and current perspective. “Black thinkers and activists of the 1960s explained police behavior as part of the colonization process that ghettoized black citizens, enforced their political and economic dependency, and thus led to the underdevelopment of black communities.”