Mourning and Mobilizing: Confronting Carceral Memory When Cops Kill in Black Milwaukee

In mourning the deaths of loved ones killed by police, families and communities of color have historically faced a double burden: finding ways to grieve in peace, while also countering authoritative storytelling meant to criminalize, demonize, and blame. And they have had to do so without demonstrating their justifiable rage in public, lest powerful figures cast it as unacceptable violence. Implications of class, gender, and sexuality can further complicate narrative fault lines, as the press and partisans rarely provide nuanced analyses that speak to all dimensions of deadly police-citizen encounters.

Law enforcement narratives following police killings of non-white people tend to position victims as deserving of death. This further justifies state repression and cultivates institutional legitimacy in ways that preserve and expand police power. Poor and working-lass Black folk, especially, have challenged this “carceral memory work”—narrative constructions pursued by punitive institutions that justify state violence committed against marginalized and dispossessed groups. Police do not act alone in this project. Relational institutions, like the courts, district attorneys, and medical examiners, co-create and affirm narratives that sanction both police terror and Black death.

And yet, carceral memory work has not gone unchallenged. Movements for police accountability have historically confronted it in the wake of racialized state violence as a method of ritualized grieving and protest. This paper argues that countering police storytelling is an essential mode of resistance critical to garnering restorative justice and upending accountability systems that legitimize policing. Using examples from Black Milwaukee’s long history of resistance, this paper explores how accountability advocates have humanized deceased loved ones in their work, while offering counter-narratives and imagining safety structures that affirm Black life. Painting an accurate picture that accounts for the deceased’s full humanity signifies a moral imperative, but also remains an organizing framework for collective action.