English professor examines Black policing during the long civil rights movement

CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — February’s Research and Discovery Forum at Penn State Lehigh Valley featured Justin De Senso, assistant teaching professor of English, who presented “Jim Crow in Blue: Policing While Black in Postwar New York City.”

A native New Yorker and the son of a police officer, he grew up hearing stories about policing in the nation’s largest city. He said he often reflected on those accounts, trying to understand how fairness and equity played out on the streets.

Beginning in 2013, he launched an extensive study of the civil rights movement through the lens of law enforcement. What has become over a decade-long investigation has taken him from conversations in small New York City apartments to interviews conducted during a car ride from Eure, North Carolina, to Philadelphia.

“The research begins with relationships,” he said. “It is a process. I am constantly documenting my thoughts, putting pencil to paper and navigating the challenges of telling this important story.”

Along the way, De Senso uncovered boxes of never-before-seen archives from Black police officers who documented their experiences while navigating the challenges of serving in law enforcement during what University of North Carolina professor Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has called the “long civil rights movement” — a period that began in the 1930s and continues today.

“Black police literature screamed for attention,” he said. “These officers want to be seen as intellectuals, as activists and as good cops.”

Telling their story

One initial challenge was placing Black policing within the broader historical context of the civil rights movement. De Senso referenced the work of historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, who challenged the idea that the movement began and ended in a “classical phase” led by “middle-class Black men in ties.” Such a narrow view, Gilmore argued, undercuts both earlier activism and the work that continues today.

Confined to the South or to a single era, the movement’s broader and ongoing narratives risk being overlooked, he explained.

Additional challenges soon emerged. Former officers sometimes expressed reluctance to revisit emotionally difficult experiences, he said. Firsthand sources have been lost over time, and establishing connections can be difficult amid today’s complex political climate.

Bennet “Benji” Hinds

A major breakthrough, De Senso said, came with a meeting with Bennet “Benji” Hinds, author of "Where the Sun Didn’t Shine." Hinds, a New York City police officer and member of the Preventative Enforcement Patrol (PEP), served in a small unit of Black and Hispanic officers assigned to some of the city’s most dangerous areas during the late 1960s.

Although the unit successfully conducted high-risk operations and disrupted organized crime, its members regularly encountered racism and internal resistance from individuals who wanted the PEP to fail. After only a few years of operating with limited resources and facing inequitable treatment and stalled promotions, the unit was ultimately disbanded.

The meeting with Hinds led to the acquisition of a valuable archive of newspaper clippings, personal accounts and professional connections that now form the backbone of the ongoing research.

“What began as me bringing lunch and talking for 10 minutes grew into a trust that opened new doors and a richer understanding of Black policing in America,” De Senso said.

What’s next for De Senso's research

De Senso emphasized that the story continues to unfold.

“Black police face a web of de facto and de jure anti-Black racism both on and off the clock, often leading to second-class status within their precincts, workplaces and everyday lives,” he said.

As the archival material expands and new stories surface, De Senso aims to illuminate the present phase of the civil rights movement by examining how law enforcement has represented both institutional authority and individual activism. In doing so, he said, the work explores the blurred lines between assigned duties and broader questions of justice.