On August Vollmer’s 1935 Crime and State Police

May 31, 2022.Reading time 12 minutes.

This is the latest installment in the Disciplining the Nation series, a history of urban policing, incarceration, and criminalization in the United States as told through essential and teachable primary source documents. You can read the introduction to the project here, and previous installments here and here. If you’re a scholar of the carceral state and have an illustrative […]

Sedona and the Verde Valley, Arizona

May 26, 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final post in The Metropole May theme, Urban Indigeniety. Additional entries in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Maurice Crandall In the predawn hours on the last Saturday of each February, members of the Yavapai-Apache Nation (YAN or “the Nation”) gather at […]

Member of the Week: Anne Gray Fisher

May 24, 2022.Reading time 14 minutes.

Anne Gray Fisher Assistant Professor of U.S. Gender History University of Texas – Dallas @annegrayfischer Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? The Streets Belong to Us traces the history of sexual policing—the ways people’s bodies and their presumed sexual practices are surveilled and targeted by law enforcement—on city streets in the modern […]

At the Falls: An Urban Ojibwe Story of Minneapolis Placemaking

May 18, 2022.Reading time 23 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth entry in this month’s theme at The Metropole, Urban Indigeniety. Additional entries in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Sasha Maria Suarez Ignatia Broker (White Earth Ojibwe) remembered that to get a “toe-hold” in mid-twentieth century Minneapolis, newly arrived Indigenous peoples had to […]

Toward a Global Urban Indigenous History: One Trajectory

May 11, 2022.Reading time 15 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the third entry in this month’s theme at The Metropole, Urban Indigeniety. Additional posts in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Coll Thrush I came to history through a bit of a side door, but it was an urban one. I had always been interested […]

Announcing the Sixth Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest

May 10, 2022.Reading time 5 minutes.

The Metropole/Urban History Association Graduate Student Blogging Contest exists to encourage and train graduate students to blog about history—as a way to teach beyond the classroom, market their scholarship, and promote the enduring value of the humanities. This year, the contest prompt is slightly different than it has been in the past. From topical themes like “life […]

Leading the Afro-American Realty Company—A Review of “Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem”

May 9, 2022.Reading time 8 minutes.

McGruder, Kevin. Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021. Reviewed by Carla DuBose-Simons In his latest work, Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem, Kevin McGruder continues to explore the processes by which Harlem became the “Culture Capital” for African Americans. This book, which follows his first book, Race […]

Commemorating Indigenous Urbanism in the Early Modern Atlantic World

May 5, 2022.Reading time 20 minutes.

Editor’s note: This is the second post in The Metropole’s May theme on Urban Indigeniety. Additional entries in the series can be found at the conclusion of this article. By Nathaniel F. Holly On a rainy November afternoon in 1972, a number of South Carolina’s most prominent citizens huddled together in a Charleston park to […]

Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism

May 3, 2022.Reading time 31 minutes.

Editor’s note: The Metropole theme for May is Urban Indigeniety. This is our first post of the month, an overview of the field. Additional posts in the series can be found at the conclusion of the article. By Kent Blansett, Cathleen D. Cahill & Andrew Needham Today, 70 percent of Indigenous peoples in the United […]