LDF Release:

Last week, the Legal Defense Fund’s (LDF) Thurgood Marshall Institute released a new research brief, When the State Takes Over: How State Officials Usurping Local Control Threatens Local Black Political Power, authored by Senior Researcher Dr. Sandhya Kajeepeta. The brief, released during Black History Month, outlines the history and growth of local Black political power and the emergence of state takeovers as a strategy for state officials to usurp that power. 

The brief provides an important perspective on how Black communities are targeted throughout the country by state takeovers without appropriate justification across multiple domains, including education, economic justice, the criminal legal system, and voting. The growing trend of state takeovers of Black-led cities, occurring when state governments intervene and take control of local affairs, the brief notes, undermines the autonomy of Black communities and represents an anti-democratic shift. Moreover, this shift is rooted in and further perpetuates a dangerous narrative that majority-Black localities are unfit to govern their own communities….