What is the “new Jim Crow”? Throughout its history, the United States has been structured by a racial caste system. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, these forms of racialized social control reinvented themselves to meet the needs of the dominant social class according to the constraints of each era.
This essay details James Reeb’s calling to become a minister and—eventually—to join the march in Selma. Although he was tragically murdered following the march, his death had a profound impact on the civil rights movement.
Deborah Walker recalls that, growing up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, fear and rage lived side by side. She credits her lifelong fight for equity to her guardian angels.
James Loewen taught race relations for 20 years at the University of Vermont; prior to that he taught at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. James W. Loewen is the author of several books, including Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The “Great Truth” about the “Lost Cause.”
Drawing on her experience as the child of Jamaican immigrants, born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Patrice enjoys exploring issues of race, immigration and belonging. Her essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Sweet: A Literary Confection and the online editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her radio commentaries have appeared on Charlotte, North Carolina’s NPR station WFAE 90.7.
Barbie is a school counselor at a dual-language elementary school in North Carolina, and a member of the Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board. Her passion for issues of race, immigration, gender and sexual justice is a strong influence in her school counseling program. In 2013, Garayúa-Tudryn founded Mariposas, a group for Latina girls that promotes empowerment by exploring issues of intersectionality, social emotional health and civic engagement.
Heather A. O'Connell is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, and a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work contributes to understandings of race and racial inequalities in the United States by examining differences across places. This spatial lens has led to a focus on processes connected to racial composition, history, region, and migration.
The recent rash of viral stories featuring white people who call the cops on law-abiding black people is an iteration of implicit bias that happens in schools every day. It’s time for educators to self-reflect.