Professor
Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History & Citizenship
Associate Dean and Chair, Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy / Legal Studies
I specialize in African American history and in U.S. socio-legal history. My first book, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), won the Avery Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians. My articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of Family History. I have held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the Stanford Humanities Center, and the MacArthur Foundation.
Before joining UC Berkeley in 2015, I was on the faculty of the History Department at the University of Virginia (1999-2002), at Northwestern University (2002-2015), and a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation (2007-2015).
My new book is entitled Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Civil Rights (Liveright, 2023). Interweaving my own family history with long-forgotten documents found in county courthouse basements, the book explores how ordinary Black people used and thought about law in their everyday lives, and how Black legal activity and Black legal thought helped shape American law and Black social movements from the 1830s to the 1970s. In a world that denied their constitutional rights, Black people built lives for themselves through what he calls “rights of everyday use.” The book tries to recover a rich vision of Black life―a vision allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle. Before the Movement was awarded eleven book prizes and was shortlisted for four more.
At Berkeley, I teach classes on African American history and on U.S. legal history. I have had the privilege of advising brilliant PhD students in both the History Department and the Program of Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP), on a broad range of topics.
Education
Johns Hopkins University, MA, 1996; PhD in History, 2000
Yale University, BA with Distinction in History, May 1993
Teaching Appointments
2015–Present, Professor of Law and History, University of California at Berkeley
2015–Present, Affiliated Research Professor, American Bar Foundation
2007–2015, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation
2002–2015, Visiting Assistant, Associate, and Professor, History Department, Northwestern
1999–2002, Assistant Professor, History Department, University of Virginia
Awards & Fellowships
2024 Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law and Society, American Historical Association
2024 Beveridge Family Prize in American History, American Historical Association
2024 Finalist for Cundill History Prize
2024 Order of the Coif Book Award
2024 John Philip Reid Award, American Society for Legal History
2024 Charles Sydnor Award, Southern Historical Association
2024 Scribes Book Award, American Society of Legal Writers
2024 Shortlisted for Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History
2024 J. Willard Hurst Book Prize, Law and Society Association
2024 Merle Curti Prize, Organization of American Historians
2024 Ellis W. Hawley Prize, Organization of American Historians
2024 Langum Prize for American Legal History
2024 Josephine Miles Award, PEN Oakland
2024 Shortlisted for Mark Lynton History Prize, Columbia Journalism School
2018-2019, ACLS Fellowship
2013–2014, Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship
2013–2017, MacArthur Fellowship
2012, Associated Student Government Faculty Honor Roll
2011–2014, Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, Northwestern
2009–2012, National Science Foundation Award (#0921883), "Local Courts and African American Life" (3-year grant)
2009, EBSCOhost/America: History and Life Award, Organization of American Historians (for article "The Claims of Slaves and Ex-Slaves")
2008, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Award, Northwestern
2008–2010, Wayne V. Jones Research Professorship in History, Northwestern
2006–2007, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Newberry Library
2005–2014, Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians
2006, Lane Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern
2004, Avery O. Craven Award, Organization of American Historians
2000, Allan Nevins Prize, The Society of American Historians
1998–1999, Pre-doctoral Fellowship, Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies, University of Virginia
1998, Huggins-Quarles Award, Organization of American Historians
1998, W. M. Keck Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Summer Fellowship, Huntington Library
1994–1998, Dean's Graduate Fellowship, Johns Hopkins
1997–1998, Sawyer Seminar Fellowship, Mellon Foundation, Johns Hopkins
1997, Southern History Research Fellowship, Johns Hopkins
1996, Travel Grant, Institute for Global Studies, Johns Hopkins
1996, Smithsonian Graduate Summer Fellowship, National Museum of American History
Representative Publications
Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Liveright, 2023)
"Race in Contract Law," University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 170, no. 5 (2022), 1199-1301
"Everyday Use: A History of Civil Rights in Black Churches," Journal of American History, vol. 107, no. 4 (2021), 871-98
"Writing Slavery's History," Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, 23, no. 2 (2009), 13-20 (invited essay)
"African American Divorce in Virginia and Washington DC, 1865-1930," Journal of Family History, vol. 33, no. 1 (2008), 21-35
"The Claims of Slaves and Ex-Slaves to Family and Property: A Transatlantic Comparison," American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007), 1039-69 (winner of biennial EBSCOhost/America: History and Life Award, Organization of American Historians)
"My People, My People: The Dynamics of Community in Southern Slavery," 166-76, in New Studies in the History of American Slavery, ed. Edward E. Baptist and Stephanie M.H. Camp, University of Georgia Press, 2006
The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003 (winner of Avery Craven Award, OAH)
"Slavery, Freedom, and Social Claims to Property Among African-Americans in Liberty County, Georgia, 1850-1880," Journal of American History 84 (Sept. 1997), 405-35. Reprinted in The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture, ed. J. William Harris (New York, 2008), 113-41
