Simon Balto

press release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Simon Balto, author of Occupied Territory!

In Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, a history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans’ lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.

Simon Balto is assistant professor of history and African American studies at the University of Iowa.