Interview local historians and ask questions about your community’s historical approaches to poverty, race, and justice. What role have past policies and approaches played in driving jail incarceration in your community?
Confront the history of racial terror in your community. Consult newspaper archives to critically examine the way local and national incidents of racial terror have been covered by your local media over time. Review national databases such as the map of confirmed racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950 compiled by EJI. Understand that this violence has not ended and draw connections to present-day racialized violence.
Study the history of Native Americans and confront the impact of colonialism and Native American genocide in your region. Consider how violence and trauma over several generations, often abetted by law enforcement, contributes to the disproportionate incarceration of Native Americans today.Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2014).
