The Loudest Voice

Corporate America needs to get on the right side of history. Civil rights nonprofit color of change gets it there – ready or not.

- By Wesley Lowery

The TV show Cops, a mainstay of American culture for 32 years, the foundation for decades of ride-along-with-the-police programming that deifies law enforcement, was going off the air. It was a major moment in television history and one that, for many, seemed to have materialized out of thin air—a knee-jerk response to the racial politics of the moment. In reality, it was the culmination of a seven-year-long campaign by Robinson and Color of Change, the civil rights organization that he helms.

Color of Change had long viewed Cops as blatant public relations for law enforcement that reinforced racial stereotypes—and that was beamed directly into millions of living rooms each week. In 2013, in the wake of the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, both unarmed Black teens, and outrage over police stop-and-frisk enforcement in New York City and elsewhere, the nonprofit launched a social media campaign calling on Fox, the show’s then distributor, not to renew it. Next came a petition, targeting Fox executives and advertisers. Then came the meetings with network execs. A protest outside of Fox’s L.A. studios was in the works when the network suddenly announced, in May 2013, that it would no longer air the show. But