Busting the Brass Ceiling

PRAISE for BUSTING THE BRASS CEILING

“Fanchon Blake has been a hero of mine for many years. She single-handedly initiated one of the country’s landmark Title VII cases. Her contribution to the equality of women and other minorities in law enforcement is immeasurable. The class action that Fanchon spearheaded helped end institutionalized sexual and racial discrimination practices not just in the LAPD or law enforcement in general.
Because of the precedent it set in civil rights law, Fanchon’s crusade for women’s rights has impacted—and improved—workplaces across the country. We owe her our respect and our gratitude.”

Joseph Wambaugh
Bestselling author of police and crime books and a former LAPD police officer—who has written the book’s foreword

“I met Fanchon Blake 38 years ago, and she changed my life. We began working together on her case at a time of social upheaval, a time when women and racial minorities were fighting for justice and demanding equality all around the country.  I was young, just starting my career, while Fanchon was being forced out of hers. What I learned from Fanchon’s dignified and determined battle for justice helped shape my values for the rest of my life. Her courage emboldened me to demand respect and equal treatment when entering a professional world dominated by men. More than anyone I have ever met, Fanchon succeeded in finding the formula for peace: Courage, honesty, conviction, generosity, humility and faith. She is truly one of my most important heroes.”

Linda Douglass
Communications consultant; former ABC news reporter who served as communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office under President Obama

“History teaches us that many principles of justice and fairness that seem self-evident have, in fact, been stubbornly difficult to establish in practice, and at great personal cost to the people who worked to establish them. Fanchon Blake, fortified by her military experience and training, devoted much of her life to establishing the principle that the Los Angeles Police Department, and by extension, all law enforcement agencies—traditional bastions of male power—are obliged to afford equal opportunity and treatment to women.
“To read Fanchon Blake’s story is to understand that the courage required to seek justice is not usually the kind that can be demonstrated in one fine, blazing moment of truth; rather, it must be summoned day by day, year after year, in the thousands of painful and humiliating incidents, both petty and large, that comprise prejudice in action. It is to understand that if a woman today finds her workplace free of discrimination of harassment, a host of other women have paid a heavy price to achieve that.
“Fanchon Blake’s story illuminates how ugly and wrong, how corrosive and destructive, is discrimination. She shows us how difficult discrimination is to dislodge, yet she inspires us to work diligently to end it.”

Congresswoman Pat Schroeder
From her afterword in Busting the Brass Ceiling

“It was my great privilege to be mayor of Los Angeles at the time Fanchon Blake won her suit against the Los Angeles Police Department. Fanchon made great strides for equal rights for all of the employees of this city. I admire her courage and tenacity, her willingness to see this ordeal to a successful conclusion. Having experienced discrimination myself, I identified with her experiences and trauma when she challenged the system. … It’s a riveting story and one that needs to be told.”

Tom Bradley
38th Mayor of Los Angeles from 1973 to 1993 and former LAPD officer

MEDIA RELEASE

Changing the Face of Policing

Bend, OR – November 10, 2020 – For decades, studies have concluded that the best way to combat police brutality is to feminize the force. While we still have a ways to go on that restructuring front, not that long ago, U.S. police departments were almost entirely made up of white males. In Busting the Brass Ceiling: How One Heroic Cop Changed the Face of Policing (Incubation Press, 2020), former cop Fanchon Blake chronicles the sex discrimination that led her to finally sue the Los Angeles Police Department, thereby initiating one of the country’s landmark Title VII cases with little to no help from anyone.

November 20, 2020 marks the fortieth anniversary of that historic class-action lawsuit’s consent decree, which officially mandated the hiring of women and minorities in the LAPD, thereby setting a precedent that would change the face of policing around the country.

Blake’s betrayal of the LAPD’s codes of silence and loyalty would not go unpunished. Despite the ensuing verbal abuse, silent treatment, and intimidation, she pushed on. Seven years later, her heroic efforts would finally make it possible for women to bust through the brass ceiling.   

Busting the Brass Ceiling not only delineates that seven-year legal battle, but the memoir also offers insights into the police status quo—including the propensity to violence. Blake’s prescient words about that could have been written today and provide answers to many current questions about policing. Even more importantly, her case reminds us that while legal recourse can often seem unbearably slow, changing laws changes society.

“Fanchon Blake has been a hero of mine for many years,” writes Joseph Wambaugh, the bestselling author of police and crime books who penned Busting the Brass Ceiling’s foreword. “The class action [she] spearheaded helped end institutionalized sexual and racial discrimination practices not just in the LAPD, but law enforcement in general. Because of the precedent it set in civil rights law, Fanchon’s crusade for women’s rights has impacted—and improved—workplaces across the country. We owe her our respect and our gratitude.”

Busting the Brass Ceiling: How One Heroic Cop Changed the Face of Policing by Fanchon Blake and Linden Gross (Incubation Press, 2020) is available online and in stores. To learn more about the book or to connect with Linden Gross, please visit  https://lindengross.com/writer/book-titles/busting.

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AUTHORS

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FANCHON BLAKE joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in 1948 and walked a beat in a skirt and heels for three years. Her ambition to rise in the ranks would be curtailed by an increasingly discriminatory agenda, but her relentless tenacity finally led to a promotion to sergeant nineteen years later. When LAPD policy barred her from rising any further and threatened to eliminate women altogether from the department, she sued. The historic case would change the face of policing around the country.

Blake’s sex discrimination class action suit against the LAPD propelled her to national attention. “This tough ex-cop and former Army major is the reason why there are now female lieutenants and captains on the Los Angeles Police Department—and why there may eventually be female commanders, deputy chiefs, and possibly even a woman chief of police,” read a 1990 Los Angeles Times article, one of dozens written about this trailblazer. Part of that prediction has already come true. As of the publication of this book in 2020, the LAPD’s Command Staff included fourteen female captains, three female commanders, a female deputy chief, and a female assistant chief (the department’s second-highest position). Blake, who died in 2015 at age 93, would have been thrilled.

LINDEN GROSS is a bestselling writer. She ghostwrote Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s New York Times bestseller The Legacy of Luna (HarperCollins, 2000). Publishers Weekly wrote that Hill’s “firsthand exposition of destructive forest practices … is extremely powerful, and her book, a remarkable inspirational document, records a courageous act of civil disobedience that places her squarely in the tradition of Thoreau.” Gross is also the writer behind Kathryn and Craig Hall’s national bestseller, A Perfect Score: The Art, Soul, and Business of a 21st-Century Winery (Center Street, 2016).

Gross has authored, co-authored, or ghostwritten an additional eight books, including Ms. Cahill for Congress (Ballantine, 2008), the stirring tale of public school teacher Tierney Cahill, who on a dare from her class ran for U.S. Congress, and Surviving a Stalker: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Yourself Safe (Incubation Press, 2013), a revised edition of To Have Or To Harm (Grand Central Publishing, 1994), the first book written about the stalking of ordinary people. Gross also functions as a writing coach and an editor, helping other people to write their nonfiction books and novels, several of which have gone on to become bestsellers.

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