Moonlight in Liberty

I came of age in the years after what historian C. Vann Woodward called the Second Reconstruction. I would enjoy its fruits, and there would not be the Nadir that followed the first Reconstruction, but there was a mitigated darkness. I slid in and out of the colored-negro-black world in which I was raised, travelling between the Ivy League and my homeplace, but it was being overtaken by something that was not us.

1. Woodward, C. (1957). The political legacy of reconstruction. The Journal of Negro Education, 26(3), 231-240.

2. Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them? - Vox

3. Overtown is a neighborhood of Miami, Florida, United States, just northwest of Downtown Miami. Originally called Colored Town during the Jim Crow era of the late 19th through the mid-20th century, the area was once the preeminent and is the historic center for commerce in the black community in Miami and South Florida.

4. Woodward, C. (1955). The strange career of Jim Crow. New York: Oxford University Press. (1955).

5. Attorney General Orders Tougher Sentences, Rolling Back Obama Policy - The New York Times (nytimes.com), Rebecca C. Ruiz, May 12, 2017; Memo by Sessions to U.S. Attorneys on Charges and Sentencing - The New York Times (nytimes.com).

6. James Baldwin interviewed by Kenneth Clark.The interview took place in 1963 immediately following a meeting of Baldwin and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

7. Asch, C. M., & Musgrove, G. D. (2017). Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books; From Chocolate City to Latte City: Being black in the new D.C. - The Washington Post

8. ACLU Releases Crack Cocaine Report, Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 Deepened Racial Inequity in Sentencing | American Civil Liberties Union

9. How Political Districts With Prisons Give Their Lawmakers Outsize Influence | KOSU; Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town? : NPR; Rural Towns Turn to Prisons To Reignite Their Economies - The New York Times (nytimes.com)