Before we start the show, we want to give you a heads up that there are descriptions of

graphic violence and other heavy content in this episode.

A few years ago, when we were developing what would become through line, one of the

first topics we wanted to learn more about was the history of policing. This was a year

after Freddie Gray died in the custody of Baltimore police. We were searching for answers.

We wanted to know how policing in America started and how the relationship between

police and the black community had evolved to be one so bloody and tragic. Our research

led us to making an episode on the history of mass incarceration and we never got back

to policing.

Yet here we are asking the same questions after another high profile case of a black person

killed by the police. It's an incredibly disturbing repetition. One that's been

occurring for a very, very long time. And so we reached out to a historian who we were

introduced to by our colleague Jean Demby from NPR's podcast Code Switch. His voice helped

us tell the story of mass incarceration so you might recognize it.

My name is Khalil Debraan Muhammad. I'm a historian. I teach at the Harvard Kennedy School.

And he's the author of the book.

The condemnation of blackness, race, crime and the making of modern urban America.

In his book Khalil lays out a historical argument for how black people have been criminalized

over the last 400 years in the US. And he does that by telling parallel narratives about

the history of policing in the North and the South. These stories are very different

but share some striking similarities. Most importantly, they share one key feature. The

use of brutal force to control black Americans. But before we dive into that history, it's

...