The Black Shield: An American Memoir of Family and Power

Both an epic history and an intimate family story, a startling account of the lives of Black cops in one Midwestern city. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, a Black police organization in Cleveland called the Black Shield was causing a stir. Officers broke ranks with their fellow cops, aligning themselves with local Black Lives Matter activists and supporting demands for radical reforms. In the midst of these fissures, Wilbert L. Cooper returned to his hometown to write a profile of the organization's president, who had become notorious years earlier for shooting a young unarmed Black man. For Cooper, the news was deeply personal. Both of his parents are retired Black Cleveland cops, his sister was a Cleveland cop, and on his mother's side, there’s been a Cleveland cop in the family since 1950.