In March 1964, the N.Y.P.D.’s police commissioner addressed a hall of 6,000 officers, identifying three “sinister” Black leaders: Malcolm X, rent-striker Jesse Gray, and Makaza Kumanyika. Just a few days earlier, 31-year-old Kumanyika had handcuffed himself inside police headquarters, protesting Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Kumanyika’s son Chenjerai, an esteemed scholar and storyteller, is now telling the real origin story of the N.Y.P.D.
To Chenjerai, the N.Y.P. D.’s story didn’t begin in 1964. He went all the way back to the colony of the 1600s, when Dutch men with lanterns and rattles patrolled the streets. The English brought constables and watchmen in the early 1800s. Soon enough, New York grew from a small town to a center of European immigrants and Black migrants.
And once police saw the quick money they could make by kidnapping Black people, free or not, and selling them into slavery down south, they grabbed it.
This was generations before Chenjerai Kumanyika’s father was arrested. But he believes it’s all connected. Of course, police would criminalize Black dissent –- policing originally defined “safety” as keeping Black people enslaved.
The N.Y.P.D. is less than 200 years old. But now, with Wondery, Crooked Media, and PushBlack, Kumanyika is diving into the history of the country’s largest police force with the new Empire City podcast. Start listening here at: pushblack.news/xy0.