The Fraternal Order of Police, founded in 1915, was created during the Jim Crow era, when policing in the United States was openly tied to enforcing racial hierarchy. Early law enforcement organizations—including the FOP—excluded Black officers, supported segregation, and operated within systems designed to control Black communities, suppress labor movements, and protect white political and economic power.
At the time of its founding, police departments routinely enforced Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and later Jim Crow laws, which criminalized everyday Black life and funneled Black people into forced labor through convict leasing. Organizations like the FOP helped legitimize and professionalize a policing system that was never race-neutral at its core.
While the FOP now frames itself as a neutral police union, its foundation was built in a period where “law and order” explicitly meant maintaining white dominance, and that legacy continues to shape how policing is experienced by Black communities today.
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