Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)
About this episode
Justin Randolph discusses his book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, focusing on the state's highway patrol and social hierarchies.
Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026), his new book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, told through the lens of that state’s highway patrol. Using oral history and a wide range of archival sources, Randolph narrates efforts by elites in Mississippi to modernize the police while maintaining social hierarchies, as well as efforts on the part of Black Mississippians to envision a world without police. Highlights include: What a focus on state-level policing adds to our understanding of policing; How the founding of the Mississippi highway patrol brought together various forms of policing in the Southwest, including the Texas rangers; A surprisingly robust discussion of cows, including Mississippi’s economic transformation to a center of cattle raising and the rise of cattlemen’s “Massive Resistance” in the 1950s; What Nina Simone revealed about policing in Mississippi, and the myth of Southern exceptionalism, in her song “Mississippi Goddam.” Guest: Justin Randolph is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M…
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