Justin Randolph
@JustinMRandolph
Sky_Blue is RandolphJustin | U.S./southern historian writing on rural civil rights and policing
My book on policing in Jim Crow America is now available for pre-order from @UNC_Press! Code 01SOCIAL30 saves 30%! Better yet, suggest its purchase at your local library. uncpress.org/book/978146968…
🔗: al.com/news/2025/07/w… "In Alabama, getting access to evidence from a police body camera is tougher than ordering soup from an authoritarian chef," opinion cartoonist @Crowejam writes. "It’s damn near impossible."
a great interview from inside a Mississippi prison with the incomparable Loretta Pierre - if the you don't know about the campaign to free the Mississippi Five, let this be your gateway justseeds.org/a-call-for-fre…
Out and forthcoming from @_inquest_: @lydiajean8 @CraigOGilmore Ruth Wilson Gilmore and me on lessons drawn in California, Louisiana, and Central Appalachia from and for abolitionist organizing.
Introducing a new 6-part series revisiting the landmark insights of Ruth Wilson Gilmore's 'Golden Gulag', exploring what prison abolitionists can learn from the history of carceral expansion. With RWG, @CraigOGilmore @lydiajean8 & @judahschept inquest.org/abolitionist-l…
Soooo much good original reporting comes out of @kut and the Texas Newsroom, a collaboration of NPR and local stations.
🧵NEW: For years, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he did not need to disclose more about his real estate interests to state ethics regulators. Of the 10 properties he or his blind trust own — most purchased in the last five years — he'd only ever listed four. #txlege
We can't have pedestrian street days or food trucks because the police are too expensive. That is the actual reason. Obscene. inquirer.com/food/restauran…
Join us for a free History Happy Hour at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 17, at the Two Mississippi Museums to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act! Enjoy free admission, live music, food, trivia, and a cash bar. Sponsored by Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi.
Jane Jacobs saw suburbs (especially gated communities) as part of a broader “plantation mentality” that underlies colonialism, factory farms, and the legacy of Jeffersonian spatiality - and she argued that humanity wouldn’t survive if the “plantation age” continued
once you realize that the suburban house is the mass commodification of the plantation you won’t see america in the same way
I couldn't know how relevant Benjamin Weber's great book *American Purgatory* would be when I reviewed it last fall. looking for American dreams of third-country deportation? that history's here, with much more. read my review in @shgape doi.org/10.1017/S15377…
Just sent the completed draft of my 2nd book off for copy edits. Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves will be published by @BasicBooks in spring 2026!
In 1985, FAMU declined to pay a $3000 moving fee so Roger Cador could relocate his family while he coached baseball in Tallahassee. Southern Univ happily paid the fee and Coach Cador went on to win 900+ games over 32 seasons. Including 14 SWAC championships (a 4-Peat in the…
The book of the summer, available for preorder now!
First book, first garden! Just got my author copies of BORN IN FLAMES, out from @wwnorton on August 19th.
Pretty comprehensive article on ICE’s use of face masks, incl. a couple quotes from me, in @latimes. Link below.
Thank you Joan W. Scott for being among the few elders of the historical profession willing to speak with common sense and clarity on the stakes of the @AHAhistorians elections
Mahmood Mamdani learned about Karl Marx from the FBI, who were investigating Mamdani because of his involvement in the black freedom struggle
When Tony Judt praised the miracle of America's great state schools, he thought first of all of IU Bloomington, where humanities programs are currently being blown to shreds
There has been a lot of unthoughtful grandstanding about Zohran's supposed retreat from abolitionist positions. But the question of what an abolitionist politics means today is open & fraught.
Pig-gratifying bullshit: “Police are critical to creating public safety across the city” “My proposal was born out of conversations with rank-and-file officers” “My desire is for the police to be able to do their jobs” “We’re sustaining the headcount of the police department”
NEW: TX lets out-of-state students buy homes to get in-state tuition. The law has led to an industry of families paying in cash for condos, owning them for 2 years, and selling them to the next out-of-state family. Often, the students never live there: kut.org/education/2025…
My latest w @lopez_wd in @truthout w support from @econhardship. truthout.org/articles/local…
Many have rightly called ICE violence an “imperial boomerang”—violence of US empire come home. That is baked into its infrastructure. ICE began as part of the war on terror & has, in last decade, built urban warfare training at School of the Americas 1/ ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/art…
The state agency responsible for overseeing county jails across Texas failed to consistently investigate prisoner complaints, maintain accurate records or complete all inspections required by law, according to a new audit. kut.org/crime-justice/…