Join us as authors Tera Eva Agyepong and Elliott Gorn explore the tangled history of black children and America's criminal justice system.
Agyepong's The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender, and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899–1945 expands the narrative of racialized criminalization in America, revealing that these patterns became embedded in a justice system originally intended to protect children. It complicates our understanding of the nature of migration and what it meant to be black and living in Chicago in the early twentieth century.
Gorn's Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till delves into how and why the story of Emmett Till still resonates, examining shifting American attitudes towards race since 1955 and presenting a timely look at the interaction between race and the media. Using new evidence and a broadened historical context, Gorn reveals how old patterns of thought and behavior endure, and why we must continue to examine them.
After their talk, the authors will sign copies of the books, which will be available for purchase in the Newberry Rosenberg Bookshop.
Tera Eva Agyepong is Assistant Professor and Director of the History of Law Minor and Pre-Law History Concentration at DePaul University.
Elliott Gorn is Professor and Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago.
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