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Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited
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Podcast Host (Intro/Outro)
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Sullivan Sommer
Protesting law enforcement abuses, whatever form they take is as old as the abuses themselves. For as long as the ideals of America have cowered before the conquest driven United States, her bullying twin, this void in the U S System of justice creates the need for full throated outrage and protests for acknowledgment of sin and for a demand for change in this recalcitrant nation. Shining light on all the victims, families, activists, allies, lawmakers and acts of protest on the local, state and federal levels over generations that have wrestled with this country's tangled and multifarious web of criminal justice is an impossible task. But perhaps providing the following instances will spark a disruption of this barbaric bloodletting. No, I am not reading from a real time news report or social media post. This is Chapter seven of A Protest History of the United States by writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker and professor of Constitutional law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Gloria J. Brown Marshall. Gloria, welcome back to the New Books Network.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about these important issues.
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Sullivan Sommer
So you and I talked about a protest history here on the New Books Network in December and we're going to link to that interview in the show Notes so people can go back and listen to our conversation. And when we did that interview, you and I made plans offline for you to come back and talk some more when the paperback dropped. But what we did not know at that time, that in fact when your paperback dropped we would be in the midst of active and ongoing protests. And so what we've decided to do in this conversation is to focus specifically on the chapter of your book titled Protesting Violent Policing and talk about it alongside another of your books, which is an annotated constitution titled the U.S. constitution an African American Context. So very early on in the chapter Protesting Violent Policing, you talk about seeing James Baldwin on television in the sixth grade. I am. If James Baldwin were with us today, what do you think he would say about what we're seeing and experiencing?
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
I I've thought about James Baldwin when it comes to American violence and had the opportunity to travel to France and speak on what would James Baldwin Do? And I actually even written a short story. James Baldwin was my daddy, and of course he wasn't, but I call him that because he's my spiritual mentor. He was a playwright and a novelist and a civil rights activist and you know, the person who could speak eloquently to so many different audiences to sum up the pain of others. And when I was a Kid, I was a precocious kid. I used to watch talk shows and all that as a very young age. And I was watching in my living room, lying on my shag carpet during that time period. And I saw this man on air, you know, on this talk show, smoking a cigarette. They did that back then. And talking about the pain of black people, the Negro, as we were called back then. And I felt that he could sum up so eloquently what we were going through at the time, even as a child, what I was feeling. But I couldn't articulate for myself being one bus to a white school across town. And so looking at this, I think he would say this is the exact same thing that he was going through, that this country fails to keep the lessons it learns, that we've been here before, and yet generations will keep rising up like these people in the regime we have now. And the younger ones as well, because we keep blaming the older ones. But Charlie Kirk was a young person with a following he had. And there are other young people who believe that the very pigment of their skin is the identifier of superiority in all areas. And that is a fallacy that was rendered untrue centuries ago. And people continue to want to raise it up, to fill a void in their lives, to get political power, economic security, whatever it may be, a sense of self and identity, but they use it. And he would say they're using it right now the same way they used it before. Because when progress is made, there's always going to be another side that's clamoring to take things back to where they felt more comfortable in a sense of superiority. And I think he would also want people to come together in community as they protest, but not let go of the big picture, that we are protesting against something that is as old or older than the country because they're looking for somebody else to be the N word. And whether or not he would say that was the undocumented. But there's always somebody that has to be at the very bottom who could be tormented by law. But I think he would also say that we have to push towards something, too. And he's written quite often, and especially the Fire Next Time and other his famous essays that we have to have a light. We're going forward to reach out and become better at the same time that we're battling against these notorious ghosts that are part of America's past and as we see present and will probably be there in the future. And that's why we have to make sure. As this chronic disease goes forward, that we realize this is something that will be with us in this country. And it's another aspect of racism, basically the classism aspect of racism that we're dealing with, because the attack is on people of color. And we should know by now that there are plenty of people of color from other places outside of Latin America who are here as undocumented people. And there are many Europeans who are here as undocumented. But those aren't the people who are the most vulnerable and therefore the ones that could be easily attacked by ice. And they get away with it. They don't have a strong enough constituency in this country. And so I think that James Bobble would say this last thing, and that is that as we battle these forces, let's not become them. And I think that's something that we have to realize, that the anger, the enraged outbursts that we know come with seeing such cruelty and unfairness has to have a limit. Where we say we will not step over the line and become the enemy or what we see in the people we're opposing, that is so reprehensible that we have to rise up because then we lose the sense of what we're fighting for. And it doesn't become a matter of what's right and fair and good and just and moral. It just becomes who can battle to the end. And that's not what we want to be in a progressive movement.
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Sullivan Sommer
I'm thinking about you saying, look, you know, we've been here before, and this idea of protesting against police actually dates back to before there were police in the way that we experienced police. Today you write, laws were enacted by the powerful elite, but enforced by a different social tier beneath them, which maintained order based on the elite's will. Someone had to be the human face of consequence for failing to adhere to law. This was the nebulous beginning of modern law enforcement. Talk about that.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Well, there's got to be the one who is willing to be the tough guy. Slaveholders. We can go back to the invasion of the European into the North American land of the indigenous who were the caretakers of that land, to have them say, we are going to come and take this land. That's a violent act. We're going to live here despite what you say, we're going to do what we want to do, and if you don't like it, we're going to take your lives. So when the other side says, I'm not going to let you just run over me, I'm not Going to let you just rape our women, burn our homes and take our land, that we're going to stand up for ourselves. Then the precarious notion of law comes into it. When I was in law school, I was quite miserable. And it wasn't until I took classes in labor law, in gender injustice, constitutional law, and then civil rights. And I realized, okay, law can also be a tool for liberation. But law is so often used as a weapon of oppression. So then you have to have the law enforcer. So laws have been around, of course, for as long as people in one form or another, written or unwritten, but who's going to enforce the law? So when the elite come into a land, you could have the slaveholders who will say, we're going to whip this person into in broad daylight in front of everybody, to make a spectacle of it so that we can show, if you do this same thing or any even think about it, this is what's going to happen to you. That would happen, but more often, the overseer would be the one doing the whipping as the slaveholder and the slave mistress looked on with all the rest of the people at the plantation. That overseer now is a person usually of the lower classes. And, and what we had in the colonies originally were very poor Europeans who couldn't afford the transportation to the new world, seeking liberty, seeking something different for their lives than knowing generationally they were in a caste system there. And you had the elite. And so these indentured servants who worked under a contract would work for nine years, seven years, 16 years, whatever it may be, for free. They were called white slaves in certain instances. But once that indenturement contract ended, they were free to go live their lives. But they were on the lower tier. And even when we get to Bacon's Rebellion, you see those lower tier whites who gathered with Africans and then, you know, fought together against the elite. They felt that they were in a subordinate position. They accepted that subordinate position. In many ways, they wanted more than to be a slave, but they usually didn't get much more than that. But in order to prove themselves, they would have to prove to the elite that they could be part of the group. And one way that the way in which they could be a part of the group would be to show their loyalty. So the elite, when, you know, even indigenous servants ran away, you know, European as well as African, somebody had to go get them. The bounty hunter. So the early police would be the bounty hunter, where you say the law enforcement, they were hired out to go get them. The earlier people to met out the punishment would be the overseer. These are Europeans and so, but poor, poor Europeans. And they had their own role in the hierarchy. And so when we start off thinking about how the beginning of law enforcement, you know, in the, in the islands, for example, we had the bobbies. These were the working class whites, you know, the working class English. And there was a club almost. This was some way in which you could get a foothold or even, even a toehold into a higher class, not being the farmer, not being. It's almost as though if you were in the shadow of the elite, some kind of way it rubbed off on you. And in many ways we kind of see it today where we have people who are poor, people who are very much working class, part time, two part time jobs, just trying to make it in the shadow of a millionaire and they're feeling a glow, if you can, in the darkness of the shadow of some sense of belonging, that I too have some power and my power comes through this. And so when you start developing this tier of people who are bounty hunters, who are the mettors of slaves, of the slave punishments, it was a sense they had a place in society and theirs was to maintain the status quo that the elite hired them. Now they become this organized force called policing in which they are there not just to maintain order for order's sake, but maintain the order dictated by the elite. And so if you're going to maintain order, it's not going to be order against the elite. And I always, I ask, you know, my friends who are police officers, when have you ever seen a guy in a suit up against the car being frisked? You know, you only you might see it on a television show, but you don't see it in real life, you know, because they know who the vulnerable ones. It's an unspoken almost. The people who need the juice of law and order are those people who are seen outside of the order of the hierarchy. Those people of color, those people who are poor, those people who are immigrants, those people who are not considered by the elite to be in the club. And so they then need to be disciplined. They need to be kept, you know, in their place. And their place, you know, is, is one always lower. And law enforcement is a way in which they can follow the orders of the elite to keep the rest of the people, the masses, outside of the light of the elite, in the fringe and marginalized places where the elite believes they belong. Unfortunately, too many people in those groups find that one way to get out is to be an oppressor themselves in one form or another. But law enforcement is one area of American life that has seen no true reform on a national level. We see reform in the voting rights area with the Voting Rights Act. We see reform in employment in all the areas that were touched by the Civil Rights Act. We see reform in housing. We see reform in so many other areas. But there's been no major federal reform when it comes to law enforcement. So we're still dealing with generational trauma and generational stereotyping. And every now and then, just as with the murder of George Floyd and what happened with Rodney King, you'll see some changes here and there. But national changes, as we saw with voting rights, you've not seen in criminal justice. And so we're still dancing to the same music from the 1600s, when in 1669, the Virginia Colony passed a law that said that if a European killed an African, there would be no felony charges brought against the European. When you start to see the laws put in place those first 100 years from 1607, when the Virginia Colony was founded, you see so many similarities between what took place then and. And what's allowed today. That is frightening because as I said, there's been no large scale national reform of criminal justice or with 18,000 police jurisdictions, reform of our policing in this country. It's evolved somewhat, but massive level reform. No.
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Sullivan Sommer
You're going to keep me honest on this. I'm thinking about what you just said. There's been no, there's been no large scale reform. I think about the, the increasing militarization of law enforcement over time. I think about also, you know, is it fair to say the Department of Homeland Security is the most recent? I think about almost as being an expansion of. I mean, it is right, like, you know, this idea of reform. I understand when you say reform, you're not talking about making it bigger, but I think about, like, oh, well, I think in my lifetime, which is, you know, 50 years, I think there's been one major change, which would be the Department of Homeland Security, which was also added.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
But during the time of President Clinton's administration, when you had more of a militarization of policing, where they were given tanks and bazookas and all of this stuff, you know, military personnel. I mean, equipment was given to small jurisdictions. Why would this jurisdiction need a tank? I Remember during the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, being in Washington, D.C. there, Lincoln's statue, and all these people are peacefully hearing the speeches. But behind the scenes There was a tank. And I kid you not, I saw it with my own eyes. There was a tank. And I asked the man who was there with the tank, what were you expecting to happen? And he looked so foolish. He just looked at me and kind of shrugged. I don't know. You wanted to use a tank. What did you think we were going to do? And how were you going to use a tank on people? You know, this is what we're talking about when we're talking about no real reform. And I know there are people, and I've had this discussion with, with people before. We don't need reform. We need to scrap the whole system. When I say reform, I use it very broadly because someone could turn around the other side and say, well, you know, we had, you know, cameras on, police vests. You know, we, we've had these things happen. We had the conviction in George Floyd's case. You know, yes, those are tidbits of changes. But when we received, and this is just me personally, when we received Juneteenth as a national holiday, I wanted major criminal justice reform. That's what I was seeking. And we got Juneteenth instead.
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Sullivan Sommer
So cation day.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Yes. So for everybody.
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Sullivan Sommer
Yeah.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
And so, so when I put. So when I'm talking about major large scale criminal justice reform, I want it to be on the scale of the Voting Rights act, something that takes history into account and a realization that this has affected so many lives and it's so deeply embedded. It's going to take federal legislation to change and I mean on a large scale. I'll give you this one example and I'll sum it up as quickly as I can. When we think of the Emmett Till, you know, anti lynching federal legislation that came out of the George Floyd murder and the protests that happened following the murder that forced people to have a trial that was finally somewhat fair and forced jurisdictions to rethink the holds that they were using against people. That's not been used. It's legislation on the book, but who's actually used it in a case? We had a shooting in upstate New York, a mass shooting, and I thought finally that would be considered a lynching. And it wasn't even thought about. I wrote an op edit on that issue at the time and I thought, okay, so here was this just to appease people. The federal legislation I'm talking about has to have more teeth, has to go deeper. And once again, since we have 18,000 police jurisdictions, it's got to be federal legislation that in a way must reach into the states and into the local jurisdictions, very much like the Voting Rights Act. And you see the fight against it that we're dealing with right now because that type of legislation undermines the political delusion of white superiority by people who think that it's unfair to actually protect the right to vote for people of color. So there's always gonna be a pushback, but I don't think we've even had the imaginative policies for us to say that's ridiculous. That goes too far. You know, we've seen, you know, defund the police, but we haven't seen, like, a federal policy draft that sets out the type of widespread reform we need with policing to stop having over a thousand people a year die at the hands of police. And it's still happening, and the number is increasing.
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Sullivan Sommer
Yeah, that. That thousand people a year figure, which is in. In the book. I spoke recently here on the New Books Network with Terence Keel about his book the Coroner's Silence. That looks exactly at. At that thousand people a year that die in police custody every year. So we'll link to that in the show notes. In the show notes as well. You write also in the book, or in this chapter in particular, about the relationship between labor, immigration, immigration and law enforcement, which is a big one I feel like we have to talk about. You write in the chapter, the country hereafter would follow a pattern of opening its borders, using the labor of immigrants and when they were no longer needed, enacting laws to criminalize them, which made them fodder for police violence at the hands of those willing to criminally debate themselves to feel superior. Talk about this.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
It's a pattern. And when we saw, in around 2008, with the great Recession and job loss, we saw people losing their homes. And it was a horrible time economically for this country and around the world. But we also saw this finger pointing at immigrants. All of a sudden it was like, well, what are you doing here? How did you get here? And we need to do something about your being here. Where before they filled a function, it was understood that they would come into the country, they would do the work that needed to be done that so many people in this country believe they are not going to do, or don't believe that they should do or believe that the pay is too low for them to do for one reason or another. This plays out so often. And one of the earliest times was during the 1800s after slavery ended. The idea was, who's going to do this labor for free now or as cheap as possible? As cheaply as possible. They, meaning people in this country, went to China. They went to China and enticed the Chinese to come to the country. And during that time period, during economic, you know, enrichment, it was a wonderful thing to have people come in from other countries, especially China, Ireland, other places, to build a railroad. Because we wanted to build this railroad. We being in this country, wanted to build a railroad between the east coast and the west coast so that we can better transport goods, you know, across the country and people and open up, you know, on. On, you know, native land, the western part of the nation. As soon as there was an economic downturn, same question, who are these Chinese? How did they get here? They're taking away American, meaning white American jobs. So you actually had riots of poor whites attacking riots, burning down their homes, burning down their businesses, running them out of town, actually posting in newspapers. If you're not out of this town by sundown, then you're going to, you know, face the consequences. This happened to the Chinese to the point where the Chinese Exclusion act was a federal legislation in 1882, excluding Chinese from having free rights in the, the rights we all have in the freedoms of this country, but also not coming into the country, denying them citizenship. All of these things were taking place. These are the same people who were in their own country. Very much like slavery. You're so far away, it's no accident. You didn't just happen to come here. They went over, got the people. They had ships to bring them here. Some of them, the former slave ships used to actually get the Chinese to bring the Chinese over. And so then to turn around and say, how dare you be here? You cannot be a citizen. You cannot marry anybody, you cannot leave your. Your small community. You can only do certain business, work in certain businesses, and we can't, we're not going to hire you. And, and you cannot be a full member of this society. We've done this with Latinos in the past. This has happened so often that we want the labor. And as long as economically whites can make more poor whites working class whites can make more than. We want the immigrant, but we don't want the immigrants, children, because then they become citizens. We want their labor, but we don't want their citizenship and we don't want them to become naturalized citizens. So for a long time, only white people could become Europeans could become naturalized citizens. African Americans were grandfathered in, but others coming from other countries who were people of color, and there are US Supreme Court cases about this, could not become naturalized citizens. Only White Caucasians could become naturalized citizens. And so we want people to come and build the country. We want them to work, but we don't want their citizenship because we don't want them to have the right to vote. And we don't want them to have full rights of protections under the U.S. constitution. And we say we, I mean the country. And that's the way the pattern in practice has been over time. And if it's one of the reasons why my book, A Protest History in the United States, is one over 500 years of selected protests and protesters, because I like to study generational actions. I like to see the pattern and practice over time. Sometimes you really can't get the pattern practices with over 50 years, even 100 years. And so most of my books are over hundreds of years to better understand. And I sometimes feel, you know, touchy, I would say nicely insulted, you know, by people. Oh, you know, you're just scanning time. No, actually I'm doing analysis and telling a story over time. So that's what really is troublesome to me, when we don't want to pay attention to the pattern and practice of the country because it makes us as a nation look bad that we're doing this again and again only to different groups.
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Sullivan Sommer
You mentioned before about citizenship specifically, and I want to for a second take a step to, to the side of a protest history and talk about your annotated U.S. constitution. Because when we talk about birthright citizenship, of course, we're talking about the 13th amendment. 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution. And you have the U.S. constitution, Constitution and African American context. Talk about. Talk about this little book for a minute.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Well, one thing, I was a very corny person to actually think about doing this, but I'm glad I did. And I teach constitutional law and I wanted people to be more interested in the Constitution. It's not that long, but most people haven't read it. Most lawyers haven't read it. They've read sections of it, but they haven't read the whole Constitution. And so I thought if I put it in a handy little book and it's annotated, and I have a focus on people of color in the Constitution because I believe that African Americans put the conscience into the Constitution. And I think that because the cases that are brought mainly by people of color, and even the Yick Wo case, for example, was the Chinese American case, that speaks of how the Chinese were treated during this time period in the 1800s. When we talk about Dred Scott and the Dred Scott case of 1857. And how an enslaved person in that case was told by our U.S. supreme Court that a formerly enslaved person, that black people had no rights, that a white person was bound to respect. So when you start thinking about these cases, you see that people didn't sit back. They said, I'm going to use law. Even the cases brought by indigenous people in the early cases in 1831, during the Andrew Jackson administration, they said, I'm going to try to use law to make my case because you're using law as this oppressive tool. I'm going to try to use it as a way to liberate myself. But they would always change the rules. Every time you get to a certain place, Blessing vs Ferguson and other places, they would figure out how to change the rules. But I figured you won't know exactly how the rules have changed unless you understand what's in the Constitution in the first place, what's the basis of all this. And the 14th amendment becomes crucial to know that. And so I thought, let's look at the people of color in the Constitution and let's look at some of the ways in which this gentleman's agreement not to use the word slave in the original body of the Constitution. So the word slave was not there. They used person. But it was understood who these, who the persons were they're referring to in the three fifths, you know, three fifths Amendment, I mean, three fifths act, where they actually said that, you know, a person was 3/5 of a person. And so it's like we know what person they were talking about who would be three fifths in a three fifths rule. But I look at the 14th Amendment in particular, and the 14th Amendment gives citizenship at birth. That's the first line of the 14th Amendment. And so then we have privileges and immunities. That's the second provision or clause of the 14th Amendment. Citizens have privileges and immunities. And so when you think about the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, it relies heavily on the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime, and the 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause. And then we have the due process clause, which is that all persons. This is very important. Privileges and immunities would be for citizens. It says, in particular, citizens. But the due process clause says all persons. So you don't have to be a citizen. You could be someone visiting here from another country. You could be here for 15 minutes or one minute. As long as you cross into the borders of this country, you are protected by the due process clause. Of the 14th Amendment. And then, of course, the equal protection clause, which also says all persons, you know, that's. And I think that when we think about all persons protected by equal protection, it means the undocumented people as well. It means the criminal as well. It means that, you know, the, you know, the newborn baby. All of these people, you know, have 14th Amendment rights of due process and equal protection. And I wanted people to know they had these rights because empowering people. And whether or not I do it through, because I'm an interdisciplinary writer, so whether or not I do it through plays or poetry or my nonfiction books or through my little Constitution, I want people to be empowered. Then they make better choices. Now, whether or not they make the choice I want them to make, that's a different story. But I believe if they know more about this constitution, that they would be able to understand what their rights are and know when they're giving them away. And too often people give rights away they never knew they had. And that means if they start giving their rights away, then the trickle effect is my rights start to erode. And so I selfishly think if I can help other people to better understand their rights, maybe they won't give all our rights away.
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Sullivan Sommer
So we talked before about immigration, and I want to come back to that, because at the time that we are recording this, we are seeing Immigration and Customs Enforcement in many cities across the nation. We are seeing people die at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and we are seeing protesters protest the actions of Immigration Customs Enforcement and protesters dying also at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. You have an anecdote, and it's probably putting it too lightly, but one of the people that you talk about in the book is Jimmie Lee Jackson. And can you read us an excerpt from the book talking about Jimmie Lee Jackson?
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Yes. And just to let people know, Jimmie Lee Jackson was the reason for the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. In March that is so well known with Dr. King in that march was for voting rights. And I will read this section. He was unarmed in Selma and had just led a protest for the right to vote when law enforcement beat his parents and gunned him down. In the 1960s, protest demonstrations were as frequent as the murders of protesters and civil rights leaders. Too often the murderers were police officers. Jimmie Lee Jackson was unarmed when he was murdered by state troopers in Selma, Alabama. Jackson's crime was leading a peaceful protest for the right to vote in that virulently racist small town. It was 1965. Jackson, a farmer and deacon in his church, chose to take the example of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. And March peacefully to the voting registrar. Black citizens had been refused the registration forms and the access to the literacy tests that were required of them to vote. As evening fell, the street lights were shut off, leaving the marchers prey to a calculated attack by police with nightsticks.
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Sullivan Sommer
Talk about, you know, there's a period of time between when you, when you write a book, any book, and it comes out into the world. As I said before at the top of this podcast, you know, I don't, I don't know that we necessarily knew what the tone and tenor of the world was going to be like on the week that your paperback dropped. Talk about how you think about this now in the context of what we're seeing currently.
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Gloria J. Brown Marshall
I'm always aware that any protest, no matter how small, in broad daylight, comes with it a sense of danger. Because one is saying to a society, we have concerns that are not being addressed. We have a problem with the status quo and we want you to know about it. And usually people say, we don't want to hear that our lives are being lived. Well, there's a problem with you. You're the malcontent. When the people protesting are people of color or the issue is about people of color, heighten the danger. When the sun goes down, I'm always frightened. And I tell people in the protests I've participated in, in the protests I've led, I know when the sun is going to set and be gone at least an hour before, because once the sun sets, that's when danger is all around. You don't know who's going to infiltrate your protest. You don't know what law enforcement is going to do. It's very difficult for witnesses to have a clear reckoning of what took place and harm will be there, especially when it is a situation that's already heightened in the news. So this has happened during the civil rights movement, this happened during the anti war movements. And so unless there are enough people, and I've been in protests that ended up being in the dark, some of them in Washington D.C. with lots of people. But I am concerned and continue to be concerned about people at night in Minneapolis and anywhere, but especially in Minneapolis being out after dark protesting, it's just too dangerous. And we're dealing with people wearing masks. And I've raised this issue many times. One, we have people who are officers in drug enforcement on the federal level, we have people who are in the FBI, we have the people who are in local policing who are going into very dangerous areas, they don't wear a mask. So to actually have people walking around with a mask on gives them this sense of power. And they have a regime, a presidential administration that's given them basically carte blanche. And Justice Kavanaugh's, I think, very reckless opinion that allows for racial profiling. That means protesters are in a situation of danger that they have to take into account. And so I think about Jimmie Lee Jackson, I think about Renee Goode, I think about Alex Prati, but I also think about the people who didn't lose their lives, but have been assaulted, have been harmed, and some people with harm that they will carry with them physically for the rest of their lives because of the way in which these ICE agents are acting during the day. So you can imagine the ways in which they would act at night under cover of darkness.
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Sullivan Sommer
You know, we've been talking about ICE specifically in the book and, and sort of federal, federal law enforcement. But in the book and in our day to day life, this is not just federal law enforcement. Right. It is state and local law enforcement as well. And I want you to talk a little bit about what you see and what you talk about in the book from state and local law enforcement. And specifically you. You say that, you know, whereas federal police, for example, certain searches would be, you know, illegal under federal law, but at the state and local level, you know, judges allow things to happen. Talk a little bit about those, those differences.
- [41:11]
Gloria J. Brown Marshall
Well, one of the people, I think, gets really very little credit is Dorae Mapp. And Dorae Mapp, a black woman in the late 1950s who brought a case that, you know, ended up before the U.S. supreme Court in the early 1960s, had her home searched against her will. They broke down the door, did everything, handcuffed her, called her belligerent. They pretended to have a warrant. They really didn't have one. They had a piece of paper. She took the paper from them when they were, like, putting in her face, like she was a child teasing her with it, and she put it down her bosom. They went into her blouse, tore out the paper, and then arrested her in the end, because they found this pornographic material that didn't belong to her. It belonged to a boarder who had moved out and left his trunk of belongings in her basement. That case went to the U.S. supreme Court, forcing the states to finally recognize that if they violate a person's constitutional rights and get evidence, that evidence should be excluded under the exclusionary rule that was already being used in federal court, but had not been applied across the board in state court. And so it was decided in Map vs Ohio that it would be applied in state courts. However, judges still have a great deal of discretion. And just like Miranda versus Arizona and the Miranda warning, there has been the chipping away of what we thought were solid rights, very much like what happened with roe vs. Wade, the chipping away of Miranda, the chipping away of the idea that this evidence would be excluded under exclusionary rule in federal court. And so I'm concerned that as our view is looking at personal rights, individual rights, that we're not looking at these other protections that we thought were bedrock protections and were not, because there's been too much of a wink and a nod giving law enforcement more and more expansion of what they consider their authority to keep order. And this sense of what order is and who's defining it goes all the way back to our initial discussion. Who's defining what order is? And who's supposed to be the one assumed to be disorderly? And it's usually going to be the poor, the people of color, those people who are on the legal margins. Those people are the ones who are usually deigned disorderly. And therefore law enforcement should use more of its authority to undermine their rights and go outside of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. And I'm very much concerned that law enforcement is gaining more and more of a foothold into expansion of their authority and reducing our protections and rights, especially given the conservative nature of our Supreme Court, that is, when it comes to actually having law enforcement have a standing trial and what was necessary for the legal ramifications to be applied to them when somebody dies in police custody, I mean, this is getting more and more vague as to when someone who dies in police custody, when somebody is harmed by police, when a criminal action can be brought against law enforcement, when do they step over the line? The line keeps moving as the high court becomes more and more conservative. And I think we need to pay attention to that, because what's happening to people on the margins will soon be happening to others. And that's another reason why the deaths of Renee Good and of Alex Preteen, that the shocking thought of it is very similar, if I may, with what happened during the civil rights movement with Viola Diuzzo, a white woman from Detroit who went down to Selma to help with the voting rights efforts down there during the civil rights movement, who was killed by Klansmen. And so when you start seeing the connections, you begin to see what happened with people of color who were poor and undocumented in these low wage jobs now has moved to white middle class. And we need to pay attention because that's how it works. The ball of oppression, once it starts rolling, is going to hit the most vulnerable first, but it's going to pick up speed and it's going to go after whomever is standing in its way. And so we have to stop this ball of oppression from gaining speed and momentum in the beginning by realizing that that person on the margins may not be you today, but it might be you tomorrow. So whether or not the protests were labor protests, whatever, people are in the streets, people have signs, people are raising their voices, people have bullhorns, and people are saying to the status quo, you are oppressing us. You may think that the life that you live is fine, but we have concerns and we want those concerns addressed. And we're going to use our mechanisms that we have politically, economically, socially, to make sure that our issue is front and foremost in your mind when you go to the store, when you say hi to your neighbor, when you vote. And so I think it took some time for people to realize. And now, once again, we wake up with the benefit of protest without thinking how it happened. You know, we. It's happened so often, it's like the eight hour workday. We wake up and think it's always been here. We wake up and think same sex marriage has always been here. But once again, it had to go through the evolution of protest. But do not believe, because it is with us today, it's going to stay with us. The same thing with Roe versus Wade. If we become complacent, we could lose these rights that took so long for us to gain. See how quickly they were taken and how long it took for us to gain these rights. And so I think the ability to feel, to be, that we're included in these progressive campaigns that lead to a more inclusive society makes us feel comfortable with the progress made. But if our comfort means that we're not vigilant, then what's been sacrificed in the protest can be easily lost.
- [48:01]
Sullivan Sommer
So in this chapter of the book, where it, you know, started in the 17th century, goes all the way up through more contemporary names that readers, I think, would would readily recognize as, again, being contemporary. Edward Garner, Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Earl Faison, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. As we're recording this, in the first month of 2026, nine people were murdered or died in ICE custody. How should we be Thinking about this moment now in the larger historical context in the 400 years that this book covers, as you said, like, hey, we need to know all of it. We need to think all the way back and notice the patterns, notice the practices. How should we be thinking about what happens, what's happening now?
- [49:02]
Gloria J. Brown Marshall
I think it's going to be very much like Jimmie Lee Jackson, that his death sparked other things to happen and the movement takes place, legislation is passed, and sometimes those names get lost, the people whose lives triggered the actions that we then have as perhaps protections against it happening again. And I'm concerned because this country kills so many of its own every day. I mean, we were already having issues around mass killings before any of this. So it always concerns me when I won't say always. It concerns me quite often when we talk about the undocumented people in such disparaging terms. And always with this phrase of criminals, rapists, murders, et cetera. We have so many homegrown criminals, so many homegrown murderers, so many homegrown rapists that, you know, it's almost as though we have this idyllic country. And then all of a sudden these criminals came. It is like we have so much crime in this country to start with. So I'm just amazed at how we point the finger at others and therefore believe they're lesser than this, their lives are lesser than, and their lives can be taken without investigations, without the necessary due process that is this. It's okay to take those lives because we've already devalued them. And it just reminds me too much of the civil rights movement when it was thought that we could kill black people and those whites who stood up, like Reverend Reeb, who stood up for people of color, we could kill them. And this whole idea is that their lives have been devalued and they should not get the protections under law that they deserve. And I think that we're going to lose more people and we're going to be in a situation in which the diabolical nature of what's going on now will at some point have a tipping point to it. And I am fearful of the carnage because we have allowed people to run rogue, wearing masks, carrying weapons, shooting point blank, holding someone down, shooting into cars. And we don't talk about Keith Porter, who was shot by an off duty ICE agent. And there's been no real investigation of that. And so then to stop the states from investigating, stopping them from actually looking into the murder of their own citizens, how much carnage is going to have to take place in order for the killings to stop. And who are those people who are going to pay the price? I think back of what happened at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, when peaceful protesters decided to stand up against Klan ish protesters carrying tiki torches across campus saying the Jews will not replace us. That's what they were chanting, the Jews would not replace us. And under this administration, the first time, when someone drove a car into the peaceful protesters killing a young woman, this president of the United States at that time said, there are good people on both sides. Remember, they were chanting, the Jews will not replace us. And now this same administration has the nerve to talk about antisemitism as though they are the heralds of it and the protectors of others. So the divide and conquer that's taking place has to be. So it's a tactic that's worked over thousands of years. And so we're looking at divide and conquer. We're looking at the major law firms who should be ashamed of themselves. Deep shame that they capitulated so easily without giving any type of fight. It's really despicable, you know, as is major law firms that have the money and, and, and didn't have the will, didn't have the sense of consciousness to stand up for themselves and thus stand up for others after, you know, taking over the arena of bringing the cases or arguing those cases before the higher courts. In the area of social justice, I think about even though churches are starting to get on board, but the churches aren't there. There's been a divide and conquer. You know, the. There are many of the conservative churches that supported this administration. Where are they now? How many people must die before they see in Christianity something that's supposed to tell them to speak up, or these two say that they no longer support an administration. What do we do? How many people have to die? And unfortunately, in a country, as I said, it kills so many of its own. Are we numb to it in many areas? Will we become numb to it? You know, when we have a five year old in lockup, I mean, this is, this is for me, the protest has to be where do our values lie? And most protesters or people say, this is outside of what my belief system. This is not what I want for my community or my country. And initially we had rallies and I thought those rallies were so important. And people put those rallies down that we had initially. And I kept saying, no, we needed those rallies because we have been isolated by social media, isolated by Covid. We needed to have a sense of community again. And so as we form more and more the sense of community and deepen, reconnect as community, I think that people are going to see the humanity in others and hopefully history is going to put such a large block on this administration and these people wearing the masks now. But you're going to have to pull the mask down. You cannot keep saying to yourself because this man is paying me a certain amount of money that I'm going to do what he says. He gave me a pardon and so therefore I become a gun for hire because this is like a private police department. And now I think that even the police, the trained police officers are looking at ICE agents with a sense of disgust and shame that they are taking law enforcement into an area, devolving into something that these people have worked very hard to be professional and be seen as professional. And now we have yahoos in a mask with all type of weaponry and no accountability demeaning law enforcement. So there's so many things that are happening, but I hope they happen faster so that we don't lose even more lives. But I'm fearful that we will.
- [56:07]
Sullivan Sommer
The paperback is out now. A Protest History of the United States by Gloria J. Brown Marshall. You can find gloria@brownmarshall23.com and on Instagram Marshall and I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online at SullivanSummer.com on Instagram at the SullivanSummer and over on Substack OlympusSummer. Thank you for listening to the new. Foreign.
- [56:51]
Podcast Host (Intro/Outro)
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- [57:17]
Gloria J. Brown Marshall
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