On September 13, 1990, Law & Order aired its first episode and has become one of the longest-running dramas in television history, spawning successful spin-offs, and capturing a generation of loyal fans. This panel explores the historical antecedents to the phenomenon of law-and-order liberalism in New York City. Panelists will consider how the racism and sexism of the 1930s and 1940s formed law and order directives and set municipal priorities to surveil and search Black New Yorkers. Emily Brooks explores the gendered and racial work of policing during the Great Depression. Shannon King contextualizes the problem of anti-Black media representations in the years that followed the Harlem riot of 1935. Bridget Laramie Kelly interprets property violence at white-owned businesses in Harlem at the height of World War II as a Black lower-middle class uprising which set in motion the municipal experiment of “probationary citizenship.”

By exploring New York City across time, panelists show how law and order evolved along a variegated experiences of gender, race, and class, and interpret policing as state action to stifle Black mobilization and dissent. Emily Brooks explores entrapment as a policing strategy to control and confine Black women to dependent economic relationships. Shannon King demonstrates how Black New Yorkers protested department stores that advertised weapons for women, challenged the mainstream press’s biased coverage of crime, and demanded accountability from Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia. Bridget Laramie Kelly argues how the Harlem uprising of 1943 began as a Black remonstration against a perceived illegitimate and overreaching use of police authority and evolved into a violent and sustained attack on what federal investigators referred to as “symbols of white domination.” Together, the panelists’ papers illuminate law and order policing in the Empire State as a racialized and gendered process and regime to consolidate state power.