NEW BOOK ON SLAVE PATROLS REVEALS ROOTS OF RACE-BASED POLICING
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--A Florida State University professor's study of slave patrols may provide insight into the historical reasons for the pattern of racially targeted law enforcement in the United States.
Sally E. Hadden, an assistant professor of history and law at FSU, has written the first definitive book on slave patrols, "Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas" (Harvard University Press, 2001). The book studies the roots, rules, procedures, progress, disintegration and legacy of Southern slave patrols during the 18th and 19th centuries. It is the most all-encompassing view of a long overlooked chapter of Southern history.
"The history of police work in the South grows out of an early fascination by white patrollers with what the African-American slaves were doing," Hadden said. "Most law enforcement was, by definition, white patrolmen watching, catching or beating black slaves."
The lack of research done on slave patrols is seemingly out of proportion to the large role they played in the perpetuation of the slavery system in the South and the legacy they left. Every slave-owning state had active, established patrols and, though they had many functions within the community, they had one basic job -- to act as the first line of defense against a slave rebellion. They caught runaway slaves, enforced slave codes and generated an atmosphere of fear that kept the slaves in line.
The system of slave patrols in the United States can trace its roots to the Caribbean where every island had laws for the pursuit, capture and punishment of runaway slaves. Virginia established slave patrols as early as 1727, but it was South Carolina that adopted the first comprehensive slave code after the 1739 Stono Rebellion, the first major rebellion by slaves in South Carolina and the deadliest one on American soil in the 18th century, according to Hadden. The new code officially established slave patrols or "paddyrollers," groups of white men charged through civic duty to keep slaves down and revolts from happening.
"Slave patrols amounted to an unequivocal manifestation of white fear," Hadden said. "Paranoia drove their formation."
In the beginning, slave patrols were made up of people from all walks of life in the South, from wealthy land- and slave-owning aristocrats on down. Service in the patrols was required by law and refusal to perform patrol duty met with a stiff fine.
As Southern cities grew, some replaced the slave patrols with police groups, while others had the slave patrols take on the duties of these police groups: breaking up nighttime gatherings, hauling in suspicious characters and capturing lawbreakers. Still, their focus was on those they considered most dangerous -- slaves.
After the Civil War, the slave patrols were disbanded and whites could no longer overtly use race to sanction legally the whipping or brutalizing of blacks. The law enforcement aspects of the slave patrols were assumed by police forces while their lawless, vigilante aspects were taken up by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
While a legacy of hate-filled relations has made it difficult for some African Americans to trust police today, Hadden cautions that our history does not really explain why violent confrontations between blacks and police still occur.
"We may seek the roots of racial fears in an earlier period but that history does not displace our responsibility to change and improve the era in which we live," Hadden writes in her introduction. "After all, the complex police and racial problems that our country continues to experience in the present day are, in many cases, the results of failings and misunderstandings in our own time."
Hadden first stumbled upon a reference to "paddyrollers" while in graduate school. Her curiosity piqued, Hadden went looking for more material on slave patrols but she met with disappointing results. So, she began doing her own research -- studying statutes, patrol records, newspapers and city ordinances, as well as slave narratives, songs, diaries, journals and letters. The research formed the basis of her dissertation for her doctoral degree from Harvard, where she also earned a law degree.
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