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Jim Crow

The Author’s Corner with Lindsey Bestebreurtje

Rachel Petroziello   |  January 7, 2025

Lindsey Bestebreurtje is a Curatorial Assistant with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This interview is based on her new book, Built by the People Themselves: African American Community Development in Arlington, Virginia, from the Civil […]

The Author’s Corner with Anthony J. Stanonis

Rachel Petroziello   |  October 14, 2024

Anthony J. Stanonis is an independent historian of the American South. This interview is based on his new book, New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]

The Author’s Corner with Peter Kolchin

Rachel Petroziello   |  October 1, 2024

Peter Kolchin is Reed Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware. This interview is based on his new book, Emancipation: The Abolition and Aftermath of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Yale University Press, 2024). JF: What led you […]

The Author’s Corner with Jeffrey S. Adler

Rachel Petroziello   |  June 10, 2024

Jeffrey S. Adler is Professor of History and Criminology and Distinguished Teaching Scholar at the University of Florida. This interview is based on his new book, Bluecoated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality (University […]

The Author’s Corner with Travis D. Boyce

Rachel Petroziello   |  November 17, 2023

Travis D. Boyce is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at San JosĂ© State University. This interview is based on his new book, Steady and Measured: Benner C. Turner, A Black College President in the […]

The Author’s Corner with Julie Carr

Rachel Petroziello   |  May 8, 2023

Julie Carr is Professor of English and Chair of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. This interview is based on her new book, Mud, Blood, and Ghosts: Populism, Eugenics, and Spiritualism in the American West (University […]

“The issue is not white supremacy, the issue is which whites will be supreme”

John Fea   |  April 1, 2023

[History] cuts a lot of the bullshit. If somebody can just say “white supremacy,” it releases them from having to talk about something that my mentor C. Vann Woodward pointed out many years ago in discussing the disenfranchisement movement in […]

Two divergent explanations of Southern inequality

John Fea   |  February 22, 2023

Over at Dissent, political scientist Jared Loggins reviews Adolph Reed’s The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives and Imani Perry’s South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Understand the Soul of a Nation. (See my review of […]

The Author’s Corner with Trent Brown

Rachel Petroziello   |  October 4, 2022

Trent Brown is Professor of American Studies at Missouri University of Science and Technology. This interview is based on his new book, Roadhouse Justice: Hattie Lee Barnes and the Killing of a White Man in 1950s Mississippi  (LSU Press, 2022). […]

The Author’s Corner with Brendan J. J. Payne

Rachel Petroziello   |  May 12, 2022

Brendan J. J. Payne is Assistant Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at North Greenville University. This interview is based on his new book, Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and […]

Bringing the Bible to the Jim Crow South

John Fea   |  February 8, 2022

In 1900, Henry Nelson Payne, a missionary and president of Mary Holmes Seminary in West Point, Mississippi, a school for Black women, was frustrated that many Bible societies in the former Confederacy were not willing to distribute Bibles to African […]

A Texas state representative defends the phrase “purity of the ballot box.” It does not go well.

John Fea   |  May 10, 2021

Watch: The Washington Post has it covered: Early on in a contentious night of debate over a bill that would create newvoting restrictions in Texas, state Rep. Rafael AnchĂ­a (D) zeroed in on what he called a “peculiar term.” The bill said […]