#AcademicRunPlaylist - 12/21/25

While the ice made it a bit slippery, I was still able to go for a nice jaunt through the woods and listen to books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was “Traveling Black” by Mia Bay. Bay methodically works through how Black people were systematically discriminated against in all forms of travel from the end of the Civil War to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Initially the strength of Reconstruction provided differential protection in some areas of the South, but the immense complexity and danger of traveling while Black is difficult to overstate, and Bay provides devastating detail here. This book also shows how it was the confrontation with these restrictions that eventually spurred the significant wins in court and legislation that culminated in the Civil Rights Act, while acknowledging in the final section that barriers remain to this day. Highly recommend https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674278622

Last was “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. Despite being written in 2010, the events of 2025 have unfortunately demonstrated just how timeless the message of this book is and Alexander's prescience. Here, Alexander analyzes the history of mass incarceration in the US, definitively showing how it is the direct heir to Jim Crow policies. Perhaps most disturbing is how accurately she calls out the likely outcome of opting for surface level diversity policies instead of deep, more honest structural reform around the criminal justice system and related aspects of our society. Highly recommend https://newjimcrow.com/