Making a Killing

By the 'leading Black historian of the age,' a searing history of state violence and the fight for racial justice

Breonna Taylor, Timothy Thomas, Rekia Boyd, Jonathan Sanders, Jordan Neely, and Michael Brown were casualties of war. Whether we call it a war on crime, a war on militants, or a war on drugs, law enforcement at every level has made Black neighbourhoods into killing fields, sites of resource extraction, and extensions of the prison system.

In Making a Killing, Robin D. G. Kelley approaches the stories of the casualties of this war as a portal to the capitalist system that strangled them and their communities and financed the unprecedented growth of police departments. From slave patrols and lynch law to the militarization of ICE, Kelley reconstructs the racist terror at the heart of the American social and economic order as well as the intergenerational journey of families who lost loved ones to premature death while navigating a system that prioritizes property over Black life.

Yet this is also the story of the counterwar. Kelley examines the legacy of collective Black resistance - the movements, tactics, thinkers, and leaders - that has long been a catalyst for change and the tip of the spear in a broader fight against rising fascism. Demanding not only justice for its victims but genuine social transformation, these movements hold out the possibility that we may lay to rest the world we know, so that a new one may be born.