The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
By Hermann W. von Hesse In the summer of 2017, I returned from Madison, Wisconsin to Accra – my hometown and Ghana’s capital since 1877 – to do my pre-dissertation research. Besides my main dissertation interests, I had since childhood been interested in the music and religion of Accra’s Afro-Brazilian descended community. Though not of […]
Read MoreKevin McQueeney PhD Candidate in History Georgetown University @KevMcQueeney Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently finishing my dissertation, which examines the rise and perpetuation of the apartheid healthcare system, racial health disparity, and the black struggle for improved health and access to healthcare in New Orleans. I became […]
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By Walter Greason African-American history remains a marginal field within the global institution of professional history. Despite the powerful transformation of world society as a result of the American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968) and the international struggle to end South African apartheid (1960-1994), most societies do not teach the stories about white supremacy, pan-Africanism, and the […]
Read MoreAndrew Pope Lecturer in History & Literature Harvard University @popeand Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My current project, Living in the Struggle: Black Power, Gay Liberation, and Women’s Liberation Movements in Atlanta, 1964-1996, explores how poor and working class residents of Atlanta came to identify mutual interests across traditional lines […]
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By Mary Rizzo It was intended to be the gala event of 1978. Under blazing Klieg lights, Al Pacino, in the midst of filming …And Justice for All, and Alan Alda, who had recently starred in The Seduction of Joe Tynan, would walk the red carpet, waving to adoring fans. John Waters, best known for […]
Read MoreJames Wolfinger Professor of History and Education DePaul University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I am currently working on a book about a World War II U.S. airman named Bert Julian. Julian grew up in the Orange, N.J. area around 1910, in an era when the New Jersey suburbs were […]
Read MoreBy Dennis Patrick Halpin On June 2, 1885, Reverend Harvey Johnson called five of his fellow clergymen and close confidants —Ananias Brown, William Moncure Alexander, Patrick Henry Alexander, John Calvin Allen, and W. Charles Lawson—to his Baltimore home. During the previous year, Johnson had orchestrated challenges to public transportation segregation and Maryland’s prohibition on black […]
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This post by Andy Grim is our third entrant into the Second Annual UHA/The Metropole Graduate Student Blogging Contest. Grim’s essay exams a moment in which the city of Newark “struck gold” by winning a High Impact Anti-Crime Program grant. The lucre, however, proved a mixed blessing… In January 1972, the Nixon Administration announced a […]
Read MoreMatthew Guariglia Ph.D. Candidate in History University of Connecticut @mguariglia Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My current research explores how policing changed as U.S. cities became more racially and ethnically diverse between the 1860s and the 1920s. A few years ago I became very interested in how the state learns […]
Read MoreMalcolm Cammeron 2-yr MA Student History Department The University of Alabama @itsmalcolmyall Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? I’m interested in the post-Civil War “Deep South” with a particular focus on the intersection of public policy, labor, cities, and civil rights. My current project explores urban renewal and resistance in an […]
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