“Race, Crime and the Color Line in Prohibition-Era Chicago”

The Department of History will host a lecture by Nora Krinitsky, a postdoctoral fellow in African-American studies. Her lecture, titled “Race, Crime and the Color Line in Prohibition-Era Chicago,” will take place Wednesday, May 2, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Mather House, Room 100.

About the lecture

During this lecture, Krinitsky will present findings from her research on the historical relationship among policing, crime policy and racialization in Prohibition-era urban America. Demands for more stringent crime control in this period prompted Chicago city leaders to demand the strict enforcement of the federal ban on alcohol and prompted a rise in the total number and rate of arrests in the city. The patterns of those arrests, however, demonstrated police targeting of marginalized neighborhoods, as police routinely arrested African-Americans and immigrants in disproportionate numbers. In this lecture, Krinitsky will compare the discriminatory policing tactics deployed in these Chicago neighborhoods and examine how those tactics shaped the relational racialization of multiple urban communities. See more information. Download the flier.