In Houston, as in the rest of the American South up until the 1950s, the police force reflected and enforced the segregation of the larger society. When the nation began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, this guardian of the status quo had to change, too. It was not designed to do so easily.
Dwight Watson traces how the Houston Police Department reacted to social, political, and institutional change over a fifty-year period--and specifically, how it responded to and in turn influenced racial change.
Using police records as well as contemporary accounts, Watson astutely analyzes the...