Mississippi Law tracks the process by which a state police force grew from an unpopular militia that subdued both nonviolent Black protest and violent white extremism. Over decades, Mississippi’s ruling class reformed law enforcement to benefit white property owners who replaced cotton planters.
Summary
Justin Randolph (History, Texas State University) has received an ACLS Fellowship for his research project, Mississippi Law: The Long Crisis of Policing and Reform in America’s Black Countryside, 1890 to 1980. As part of his fellowship, he plans to be in residence at the University of Washington in the Department of History and here at the Simpson Center for the Humanities. As part of Randolph's residency, he will join the 2022-2023 Society of Scholars and participate in existing campus initiatives histories of slavery and abolition. Learn more Randolph's work on his website.
Research Abstract
Mississippi Law tells a history of policing in rural America. For generations Black Mississippians fought against the tandem of vigilante and state violence, from lynch mob and riot squad. Activists recognized law enforcement as a key piece of the Jim Crow racial order, equal to segregation, vote suppression, and employment discrimination. Unlike these fixtures of American apartheid, policing emerged from the 1960s emboldened. The American South became a multiracial democracy under police rule. Mississippi Law tracks the process by which a state police force grew from an unpopular militia that subdued both nonviolent Black protest and violent white extremism. Over decades, Mississippi’s ruling class reformed law enforcement to benefit white property owners who replaced cotton planters.