New Books in History Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited
Feb 8, 2026
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, writer, civil rights attorney, and constitutional law professor, reflects on the history of protest and policing. She traces policing’s roots to slavery, discusses militarization and weakened federal reform, and warns how legal shifts and institutional patterns endanger protesters and marginalized communities.
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Origins Shape Modern Policing
- Policing in the U.S. grew from elite needs to maintain order via a lower social tier, tracing to slave overseers and bounty hunters.
- Gloria J. Brown Marshall argues this creates structural bias against the poor, immigrants, and people of color.
Reform Requires Federal Reach
- Despite periodic reforms, the U.S. has seen no large-scale national criminal justice overhaul comparable to the Voting Rights Act.
- She warns federal legislation must reach local jurisdictions to curb police violence across ~18,000 agencies.
Labor Needs Then Exclusion Repeat
- The U.S. repeatedly recruits immigrant labor then criminalizes those groups when economic tides shift.
- Brown Marshall traces this pattern from 19th-century Chinese labor to modern treatment of undocumented workers.
