White Backlash and the American State – Syllabus

by William Horne

William Horne, Co-Founder and Editor of The Activist History Review, is an Arthur J. Ennis Postdoctoral Fellow at Villanova University who writes about the relationship of race to labor, freedom, disability, and capitalism in post-Civil War Louisiana. He is a former high school teacher, barista, and warehouse worker and is an avid home gardener. He holds a PhD in History from The George Washington University and can be followed on Twitter at @wihorne.

Course Description:

On 1 June 2021, President Biden commemorated the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre in which white Americans killed Black Tulsans with impunity as they burned the Black Greenwood neighborhood to the ground. While many Americans expressed surprise and horror when they learned of the massacre for the first time over the last year, white supremacist violence erupted repeatedly from Memphis, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles and Wilmington in the nineteenth century to Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Greensboro in the twentieth, targeting nonwhite others from across the racial spectrum. And although they seemed sporadic bursts racist violence, these massacres occurred without exception alongside political movements to limit the rights of marginalized groups to benefit a white majority. This course examines this process of backlash, encompassing both vigilantism and public policy, as a central feature of the American state.

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