The Book
Blue-Coated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality
The Author(s)
Jeffrey S. Adler
Blue-Coated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality explores the early twenty-century roots of modern police brutality. Adler has managed to write a book that is engaging, thought-provoking and timely. In 2020, America was shaken by the brutal reality of police violence against people of color as the world witnessed the death of George Floyd. Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for several minorities who have unjustly been victims of police violence. In five chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion, Adler clearly states his thesis, provides evidence, and analyses story after story that convinces the reader that police brutality is historically rooted in ideas of maintaining white supremacy under the guise of “law-and-order policing.”[1]
In chapter one, “Any Slight from A Negro Is a Humiliation That Must Be Instantly Revenged,” Adler explains how racial disparities in policing are no accident but rather are rooted in a history of oppression and discriminatory decision-making that have deliberately targeted black people since the Reconstruction Era, including Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing, all of which were used to continue post-slavery control over newly-freed people. This history helped create an inaccurate picture of crime that deceptively links black people with criminality, allowing police and vigilantes to employ openly brutal control tactics. Alder writes, “Again and again, white residents confronted, assailed, assaulted, and murdered African Americans who appeared “insolent,” “uppity,” or who demonstrated “signs of insubordination,” fearing that such micro-breaches in custom exposed larger cracks in the structure that maintained social stability,” meaning, white supremacy.[2]
The title of chapter two, “At No Time in the History of Our State Has White Supremacy Been in Greater Danger,” derived from a quote from Orleans Parish District Attorney Eugene Stanley. Adler uses this quote to explain the reasons he sees the blending of white supremacy and law-and-order policing in the 1920s and 30s in “New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Mobile, Huntsville, Nashville, and the urban South.”[3] There are three reasons given by Adler: first, the Great Migration; second, the failure of long-established ways for maintaining racial order; and lastly, a crisis in white gender roles causing the inability of white men to defend themselves.[4] These reasons are defined and well-researched, leading the reader to the Percy Thompson story in chapter three, in which Adler notes that “between the 1900s and the early 1930s, the rate of police homicide of African American suspects tripled.”[5] According to Adler, “racialized policing and violence served the cultural needs of white New Orleanians.”[6] Adler argues under the rule of law, police brutality bolstered white dominance, “making the preservation of white supremacy the core mission of the local and regional criminal justice system.”[7]
Chapter four, “Buttercup Burns, Bulldog Johnny Grosch, and the Killer Twins,” introduces the reader to a number of psychopathic murders of the African American community who were considered to be upstanding white citizens. Adler describes Willie Grosch as a serial killer who was proclaimed a hero and guardian of law and order. James ‘Buttercup’ Burns, promoted to police captain in 1928, while adored by the white community, was a sheer terror to the African American community. Adler describes how Burns “routinely commanded his officers to secure confessions with the aid of heated stove pickers.”[8] Bulldog Johnny Grosch, Willie Grosch’s brother and New Orleans Police Chief detective, was well regarded as he threatened, tortured, and beat suspects for the duration of his 15-year career, all in the name of law and order. The Killer Twins, although not biologically twins, Lawrence Terrebonne and David Marks, were two detectives who employed the Grosch brother’s inhumane tactics of shooting first in regard to the African American community. Adler points out that these men were not unique to policing in the South at the time; policing fortified white supremacy throughout the nation.
In chapter five, “Negroes are Willing to Die Than Submit to the White Man’s Terror,” Adler discusses the strength of the African American community in New Orleans. Adler writes, “African Americans resisted, challenged and denounced police brutality in myriad individual and collective ways,” with the help in some cases of white allies.[9] The conclusion of the book ties everything together. It provides a clear yet difficult-to-read analysis of modern policing that has historical roots in maintaining law and order and white supremacy. It explains why America is still plagued with “Killers who Hide Behind Badges,” a fitting title to conclude the book. Overall, this 191-page book is a must-read; it contributes to the historiographical knowledge of any scholar or non-scholar seeking a better understanding of policing in America.
[1] Blue-Coated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality, by Jeffrey S. Adler, (University of California Press, 2024), 2.
[2] Adler, 12.
[3] Adler, 57.
[4] Adler, 39-40.
[5] Adler, 63.
[6] Adler, 83.
[7] Adler, 83.
[8] Adler, 97.
[9] Adler, 111.
About the Reviewer
Dr. Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir is the Keller Family Endowed Professor of History at Xavier University of Louisiana. She earned her Ph.D. in American History from Louisiana State University with African-American and Latin-American history concentrations. Throughout her academic career, she has focused on the New South period through the Civil Rights Movement, with particular interest in African American activism in Louisiana. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir teaches courses in African American History, including Slavery and Servitude, U. S. Civil Rights Movement, and Hip Hop and Social Justice. She has worked in the field of public history and has been featured on MSNBC and History News Network, has been quoted in the New York Times and published a New York Times Op-Ed article, as well as interviews by local news and radio media and the podcast titled Sticky Wicked: Louisiana Politics and the Press. She has written several articles, one of her most noted ones being published in The Journal of African-American History titled, “Nothing Is To Be Feared: Norman C. Francis, Civil Rights Activism, And The Black Catholic Movement.” She has served as a committee member for the American Historical Association, Nominations Committee (chair), Committee on Minority Historians, and Louisiana Civil Rights Trail Site Review Committee. Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir is a board member of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Supreme Court Historical Society, and the Helis Foundation John Scott Center chair. In 2020, she was awarded a $500,000 Andrew W. Mellon Grant to create the African American and African Diasporic Cultural Studies Major at Xavier University of Louisiana, the department she now chairs. In addition, Dr. Sinegal-DeCuir has served as chair of the History Department and President of the Faculty Association. In 2021, she was awarded the Xavier University of Louisiana Norman C. Francis Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching.
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