Race and the Houston Police Department, 1930-1990: A Change Did Come

In Houston, as in the rest of the American South up until the 1950s, the police force reflected and enforced the segregation of the larger society. When the nation began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, this guardian of the status quo had to change, too. In this book, Dwight D. Watson traces how the Houston Police Department reacted to social, political, and institutional change over a fifty-year period - and specifically, how it responded to and in turn influenced racial change. Using police records as well as contemporary accounts, Watson astutely analyzes the escalating strains between the police and segments of the city’s black population preceding the 1967 police riot at Texas Southern University and the 1971 violence that became known as the Dowling Street Shoot-out. By 1977, the events surrounding the beating and drowning of Jose Campos Torres while in police custody encouraged Houston’s growing Mexican American community to unite with blacks in seeking to curb police autonomy and brutality. Watson’s study illuminates not only the role of a southern police department in racial change but also the internal dynamics of change in an organization designed to protect the status quo.