Partners & Public Initiatives

The Divided City

An urban humanities initiative in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, the Center for the Humanities, and the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis. Under its auspices, Profs. Caitlyn Collins, Patty Heyda, and I have collaborated on a capstone course offered jointly through Sociology and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Titled In\Visible St. Louis: People, Place, and Power in the Divided City,” the community-based research course is based on our “Inequality and the City” curricular design project.

Margaret Walker Center

Housed at Jackson State University, the Margaret Walker Center is an archive and museum dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African-American history and culture. Founded as the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People by Margaret Walker in 1968, the Center seeks to honor her academic and artistic legacy through its archival collections, exhibits, and public programs. Since 2011, Center Director Robert Luckett has hosted and co-directed two “Justice Brandeis Semester” programs that brought together students from Brandeis and Jackson State Universities to undertake primary research on aspects of the civil rights struggle in the Deep South and New England. 

Racial Violence Archive

Funded by a collaborative National Science Foundation Grant (#1024396) and compiled by multiple research teams directed by Professor Geoff Ward, the Racial Violence Archive (RVA) collects, analyzes, and shares information detailing racial violence in U.S. history. The RVA focuses on terroristic control (i.e., intimidation, violence, and reprisal used to create fear and control behavior) targeting African-Americans in the 20th century U.S. South. The RVA incorporates and extends related collections, most notably national data on lynching compiled by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, researchers at Tuskegee, and several contemporary scholars. By documenting additional forms and patterns of racial violence from the era of lynching and since, and developing online RVA features, the project seeks to support related research, education, and advocacy.

Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project 

Directed by Professor Margaret Burnham and housed at Northeastern University’s Law School, the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) conducts research and supports policy initiatives on anti-civil rights violence in the United States and other miscarriages of justice of that period. CRRJ serves as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and organizers involved in various initiatives seeking justice for crimes of the civil rights era. Geoff Ward and I, along with teams of WashU students engaged in our Action Research Lab, continue to collaborate with the CRRJ’s Legal Clinic to utilize and extend the Burnham-Nobles Archive, dedicated to “identifying, classifying, and providing factual information and documentation about anti-Black killings in the mid-century South.”

New City School

A progressive K-6 school in St. Louis’ Central West End, New City was founded on a commitment to diversity, equity, and justice. I have worked with social studies teacher Stephanie Teachout-Allen on curricular initiatives ranging from the removal of the Confederate Monument from Forest Park to school desegregation policy. Click here to listen to Stephanie and I speak to “St. Louis on the Air” host Don Marsh about using Confederate monument controversies as a teaching tool.

Facing History and Ourselves 

Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO) is an international educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide and oppression, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives. FHAO’s Teaching Mockingbird unit engages directly with the organization and legacy of Jim Crow, and includes a set of activities associated with the video feature Understanding Jim Crow: Setting the Setting.