On the day that Michael Brown died in August 2014, a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri guided the dog he handled to urinate on a makeshift memorial at the site where his colleagues had shot Brown hours before. The related outrage and demonstrations against police treatment in that community captured international attention.

One long-running complaint in Ferguson was that police regularly used their dogs with excessive force against only African Americans. In the recent past police in Los Angeles inflicted more injuries with dogs than guns, batons, or tear gas, and did so disproportionately against black people, who they often called “dog biscuits.”

These cases are not isolated. Dogs have been a tool for the intimidation and control of African Americans since the inception of slavery.