Sam Watts interviewed historian and long-time friend of ANZASA, W. Fitzhugh Brundage about his latest book, Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition (Harvard University Press, 2018) in May 2019. W. Fitzhugh Brundage is the William B. Umstead Professor of History at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has also published widely on Civil War and Reconstruction memory, lynching and nineteenth century socialist utopianism in the … Continue reading Q&A: W. Fitzhugh Brundage

By Dr Prudence Flowers On 15 May 2019, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law a measure that bans all abortions from the moment of conception, except in cases where there is a “serious health” risk to the pregnant person. Doctors who perform abortions could be charged with a felony and face a potential 99-year prison sentence. Alabama now has the dubious distinction of having … Continue reading A Movement Divided? Incrementalists, Absolutists, and Anti-Abortion Strategy

By Assistant Professor Traci Parker Several years ago, I walked into Bloomingdale’s, an upscale department store on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, to browse the women’s designer shoes (which needless to say, I could not afford). I was pleased to see a number of African American sales workers in the shoe department, assisting women shoppers from different races and backgrounds. At that time, I was consumed with … Continue reading Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s

By Dr Felicity Turner In May, 1858 the Justice of the Peace in Haywood County, North Carolina indicted a local white women, Caroline Morrow, for infanticide. The local Coroner, who instructed the Justice to indict, heard from a range of witnesses—all white, in this instance—before reaching a decision in Caroline Morrow’s case. These witnesses included local farmers; Caroline’s sister, Sarah; a number of local women; … Continue reading On the Scent of Blood: The Senses as Historical Evidence

By Dr. Keira Williams After the historic midterm election of 2019, there is now a record number of women in the U.S. Congress, and it has become popular to muse about the effects the newcomers might have on national politics. Indeed, according to some scholars, the women ‘might just get a broken system working again.’ These suppositions that women, if given the chance, will rule … Continue reading A Matriarchal Moment in American Politics?

By Professor Jeffrey S. Adler The scholarship on the history of racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system is often curiously ahistorical.  It is commonplace for researchers, particularly those writing about the American South, to identify modern racial biases and to project them backward, onto a static, timeless past, implying that racial disparities have always existed or have at least existed continuously since the … Continue reading Historicizing Racial Disparities in American Criminal Justice