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Local historian Menika Dirkson brings her book talk to the library she grew up in

Hope and Struggle in the Policed City published last summer, and Coleman Library debuts the book this month alongside a book chat.

Menika Dirkson with her book at the Coleman Library. (Photo: Molly Ward)

Menika Dirkson grew up in the Germantown area, visiting the Joseph E. Coleman Library regularly. She attended Lingelbach Elementary and remembers visiting historical sites throughout the Northwest on school trips. It’s one of the reasons she was called to be a historian

And just this past July, her first book, Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia, was published.  Dirkson refers to the book as a “torrid tale” from the 1920s through the 1970s that intersects the narratives and experiences of African Americans moving from the South during the Great Migration to Philadelphia.

Cover of Menika Dirkson’s new book. Photo of State Representative David P. Richardson at a demonstration. (Photo: Robert L. Fox, Design: Adam B. Bohannon)

The book also examines how stigmatization criminalized Black folks and other people of color via media and the government alongside hyper-surveillance and policing of the Black community. Meanwhile, community activists, organizations, and some elected officials tried other ways to solve issues of violence and crime in their own communities. 

While the book has been available for purchase for half a year, Hope and Struggle in a Policed City will make its debut at the Coleman Library this month, where neighbors will be able to borrow the book. To accompany the release, she will also do a book talk.

The journey to writing the book

For Dirkson, it probably started in 2012 with the murder of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watchman. She never had negative experiences with police, but it made her start researching the statistics of police-involved shootings. 

Her love of the history of the 1970s made the decade her first focus. She shares some of the findings that jump-started her research.

“I discovered that based on what the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia gathered in information, from 1970 to 1978, there were 469 police-involved shootings in Philadelphia. And at the time, 33% of the population in Philadelphia was black. But 66% of the people shot and or killed by the police from 1970 to 1978 were black.”

This led to more research and conversation about policing with folks like her dad, who grew up in North Philly in the ‘70s, where people brought up juvenile gang violence and issues around poverty in neighborhoods all across the city.

She knew she wanted to write about community activists that didn’t get a lot of attention but put work in on the ground for the change they wanted to see in their communities. She notes that Matthew Countryman, another Germantown native, has also written about some of these activists.

She finally settled into what would become her doctoral dissertation while getting her doctoral degree in history at Temple University, which would then become the book.

Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University and Dirkson’s dissertation advisor, said it usually takes five or six years to write a dissertation and then almost as long to turn it into a book. In Dirkson’s case, it was one of the fastest turnarounds he has seen to turn a dissertation into a book, which took about five years to write and about a year and a half to publish. He said it speaks to Dirkson’s quality of the work she has done, the importance of the work, and her ambition.

What else you can expect in the book

Simon said when Dirkson was writing the book, there was a fundamental re-thinking of American history around incarceration, alongside a movement and uprising around the death of George Floyd by police. Her work showed its longer history, specifically in a Philly context.

He says Dirkson was trying to address essential moments in Philly, where these issues may have felt subtle but prevalent. 

He names Larry Krasner’s run for District Attorney as one of those, saying, “One of the things that was really important to understand with the intersection between mass incarceration and blackness was the way in which the larger narratives stigmatize Black people and turn them into criminals before almost anything else.”

Also within the book, Dirkson recounted narratives of experiences from Black folks from the South who made their way to Philadelphia, including oral histories like the stories from the Goin’ North archive, which also highlights these experiences. 

She included accounts from older newspapers, reporting, and conversations about how journalists and some elected officials created a profile of criminality that supported the hyper-policing and de facto segregation of the growing Black community in the city. 

De facto segregation was one of Dirkson’s more significant discoveries as she researched, as she was only familiar with de jure segregation–laws that kept Black people separate in the South. 

De facto segregation was different, as these were rules and norms that aren’t necessarily laws but practiced in reality.  Some of these rules look like Black people not visiting certain neighborhoods because of possible racist violence, withholding housing and employment based on race, and much more. 

Another part of research that stood out to her was how, throughout the years she was studying, different groups of people, who may seem to be on opposing ends of a social spectrum, were using similar tactics to rehabilitate and support communities that were affected by juvenile gang violence, crime, and poverty.  

These were Black community activists, white Quaker groups, some elected officials, and some police-supported groups. Tactics like recreational activities, sports, access to therapy, job training, and mentorship were included in many ways in which the varying groups were trying to support communities.

Dirkson’s call-to-action to neighbors and readers

While there are many themes folks can explore within the book, Dirkson hopes one of the essential points people take away from it is supporting and getting involved with community organizations already doing the work to move toward solutions.

From her research and her own volunteer work with the library, she knows that many folks think if you vote for a particular politician, they will come in and fix things. 

She stresses the importance of money, time, and energy going into libraries, recreation centers, service providers, and other community organizations focusing on affordable housing, education, and liveable employment. She names local and city organizations like Treehouse Books, Urban Youth Kings and Queens, and House of Umoja as just some examples of those organizations. 

She also hopes she’s shown a clear historical path of why specific neighborhoods and people are criminalized in Philadelphia and society. 

“It’s a book that I want to inspire people to believe that there can be change in their communities and that sometimes you don’t need government intervention. And oftentimes, the government won’t be there to support you with social welfare or funding of community organizations. So sometimes it will take people in their own communities fighting for issues and doing the work themselves in order to solve issues of poverty and crime and violence,” she said.

And as for giving a book talk in the library, she went to growing up? Dirkson says she’s both nervous and honored.

“I think it’s really cool that in the 1990s one of my teachers from Lingelbach on occasion marched our elementary school class to JEC (Joseph E. Coleman) to explore books there, and now my book will be on a shelf at JEC for other neighborhood kids to explore,” says Dirkson.

You can hear more about the book and the stories that Dirkson recounts at her book talk at Joseph E. Coleman Library (68 W. Chelten Avenue) on Saturday, January 18, 2025, at 3:00 p.m.