School as Military Headquarters: Schooling and Policing 1960s Urban Dissent

• In Event: Schools as Carceral Sites

Abstract

During the long hot summers of the 1960s, schools in cities undergoing urban rebellion housed, supported and bolstered Police efforts' to quell Black resistance. On one end schools prevented urban rioting through initiating summer programs and initiatives to keep children too busy to revolt. On the other, schools housed the National Guard troops and thus had a more immediate and more psychically violent impact on thwarting rebellion. Using federal records, including administrative memos, Congressional Testimonies, and files of Riot commisions, this paper finds that schools criminalized youth both through education programs (seen as crime prevention) and through partnering with state military. In doing so I provide historic insight for tracing the sources and continuities of the “school to prison nexus.”

Author

• Mahasan Violet Chaney, Brown University
  Presenting Author