The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Timothy J. Gilfoyle The fear of increasing crime in nineteenth-century American cities generated an unprecedented expansion of penitentiary and carceral systems throughout the United States. The autobiography of George Appo (1856-1930) presents a rare window into this subaltern world of incarcerated men. Appo was arrested more than a dozen times and spent more than a decade […]
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By Yalile Suriel In December 1978, the FBI’s Law Enforcement Bulletin shined a national spotlight on the incredibly rapid rise of University Police Departments. These departments emerged as one of several tools that institutions of higher education used to respond to student uprisings, national calls for law and order, and to catalyze their role in projects of urban […]
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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 […]
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By Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen The purpose of the Disciplining the Nation project is to make the history of policing, incarceration, and criminalization in the United States more accessible and teachable by highlighting the documents which shaped it. In addition to looking at specific documents, we also want to highlight specific public history projects […]
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This post is part of the Metropole’s Disciplining the Nation series, where we are spotlighting a primary source that is vital to the retelling of the history of racial state violence and criminalization in the United States. Learn more about the series here. By Charlotte Rosen “I am not under a court sentence of death. […]
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By Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen A Teaching Aid and Documentary History of Policing, Incarceration, Criminalization, and Activism in the United States For many years now, the Urban History Association and its conference has served as a type of home base for historians looking to explore and excavate the troubling histories of criminalization, policing, and […]
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