Wilbert L. Cooper, 2024 Winner
Wilbert L. Cooper, who writes intimately about race and policing in America, hails from a family of Black police officers. For three generations, he has had loved ones—including both of his parents—serving the City of Cleveland in blue. This connection to law enforcement has grounded his reporting and investigations.
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In May 2024, the Marshall Project, the Pulitzer Prize-winning non-profit news organization that focuses on criminal justice, where Cooper is a staff writer, published his “Out of the Blue: The Rise and Fall of a Black Cop.” The in-depth feature profiles a Black police officer who was promoted shortly after controversially shooting a Black man at a traffic stop. But later, when the same cop became a vocal advocate for police reform, his career went off the rails.
Cooper’s 2015 Vice Media documentary, The Cleveland Strangler, investigated the Cleveland Division of Police’s stunning failure to stop a prolific and brazen serial rapist and killer who targeted Black women. The documentary was viewed more than one million times and was nominated for an Ellie award by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
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Cooper will continue to explore the dualities of Black police officers with his forthcoming book, The Black Shield, which will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The book will weave narratives of Blacks inside law enforcement resisting and acquiescing to the institution’s culture alongside stories of his own family, who have tried to use the job as a stepping stone into the American middle class.
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“In 1971, Richard J. Margolis published a powerful series of articles focused on the plight and promise of recruiting Black police officers in the wake of the racial unrest and uprisings,” Cooper said. “These prescient pieces have greatly informed my own work, so it is an incredible honor to receive his namesake award.”