Look to California to Understand Jim Crow

The Violence Black Americans Face Today Is Rooted Everywhere—Including the Nation’s Most Progressive State

This essay was published alongside the Zócalo public program “How Does the Inland Empire Strike Back Against Hate?,” presented in partnership with California Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, United We Stand, UCR ARTS, and UCR College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Watch the event here.

For over 25 years I have asked my students in U.S. history courses the same questions about Jim Crow:

“Where does Jim Crow ‘live’?”

“When did it begin?”

“How does it work?”

Their answers almost always focus on Southern states. I have taught …

by Lynn M. Hudson | July 15, 2024

In San Antonio, Remembering More Than the Alamo

Innovators Are Using Digital Tools to Tell Stories of the City’s Black and Latinx History

by William Deverell, Jessica Kim, Elizabeth Logan, and Stephanie Yi | October 12, 2023

In San Antonio, Texas, one memorial—the church-turned-fort-turned-shrine of the Alamo—dominates the landscape. At the Alamo, the artifacts, images, and captions on display tell a unified story: That martyrs died there …

Hattiesburg Tells Us What America Has Lost, Gained—and Still Needs to Fix

Zócalo Book Prize Winner William Sturkey Describes What a Community Achieved Under Oppression—and How We Can Learn From Its Accomplishments Today

by Sarah Rothbard | May 21, 2020

At a moment when community feels precious and crisis lays bare American inequalities, the title subject of the 10th annual Zócalo Public Square Book Prize Lecture felt vital: “How Do …

Historian William Sturkey Wins the 10th Annual Zócalo Book Prize

Hattiesburg, an Intimate Look at a Segregated Southern City, Delivers a ‘Finely Woven Microcosm of American Society’

Interview by Sarah Rothbard | April 16, 2020

Since 2011, the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize has honored the author of the U.S. nonfiction book published in the previous year that best enhances our understanding of community and …

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