PhD Candidate
North America
I am a historian of North America and the Black Atlantic World. I specialize in Black political thought and praxis, policing and state violence, and the relationship between the media and the condemnation of Black life. My approach to political history is rooted in the politics of the enslaved, which is centered around two fundamental questions: What is and is not political? And how do those who are excluded from and/or neglected by the “official” electoral process practice politics?
My current research carefully examines the myriad dimensions of the life and times of a renowned East Oakland drug kingpin—Felix Wayne Mitchell Jr.—to situate him and his community within the context of an epic shift in late twentieth-century Black politics and culture. It explores the ways in which the punishment bureaucracy—the media, politicians, police, lawyers, judges—scapegoated those who participated in illicit economies, especially young Black men, in order to criminalize entire Black communities and draw attention away from the structural conditions that fueled the early ‘dope era’ in 1970s and early 1980s Oakland.
I am born and raised in the Bay Area, California, and a proud product of Peralta Community Colleges. I earned bachelor’s degrees in Africana Studies and History, and an M.A. in History at San Francisco State University in 2019.
