In How
to Lose the Hounds
Celeste Winston explores marronage—the practice of flight from and
placemaking beyond slavery—as a guide to police abolition. She
examines historically Black maroon communities in the Maryland
suburbs of Washington, DC, that have been subjected to violent
excesses of police power from slavery until the present day. Tracing
the long and ongoing historical geography of Black freedom struggles
in the face of anti-Black police violence in these communities,
Winston shows how marronage provides critical lessons for reimagining
public safety and community well-being. These freedom struggles take
place in what Winston calls maroon geographies—sites of flight from
slavery and the spaces of freedom produced in multigenerational Black
communities. Maroon geographies constitute part of a Black
placemaking tradition that asserts life-affirming forms of community.
Winston contends that maroon geographies operate as a central method
of Black flight, holding ground, and constructing places of freedom
in ways that imagine and plan a world beyond policing.