Detroit Under STRESS:  Campaigns Against Police Violence in the 1970s and the Present

Join the College of Liberal Arts and History Soirée for a talk by Austin McCoy, assistant professor of history, West Virginia University. This talk will explore the broad-based campaign to abolish the Detroit Police Department’s clandestine “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” (STRESS) unit that was responsible for killing more than twenty Black Detroiters in three years. Professor McCoy will use the anti-STRESS movement to draw connections between organizing against police brutality during the early-1970s, the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement during the Obama Era and calls to defund the police in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Thursday, September 15, 6–7:30 p.m. (CST), 7–8:30 p.m. (EST)

Speaker Bio: Dr. Austin McCoy (he/him) is an assistant professor in history at West Virginia University specializing in African American History. His current book project, tentatively titled The Quest for Democracy: Black Power, New Left, and Progressive Politics in the Post-Industrial Midwest, revises conventional explanations emphasizing the separation and decline of Black Power and the New Left in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s. The Quest for Democracy is organized around six case studies of activists in Detroit, Chicago, and in the state of Ohio organizing for participatory democracy in urban development, foreign policy, and the industrial economy. Ultimately, the project shows how progressives scored victories in local elections as well as anti-war and anti-police violence campaigns and their struggles against deindustrialization influenced national political discourse.

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