Kevin Mumford is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he teaches African American history, civil rights, and the history of sexuality. His research looks at long-term social inequalities and the dynamics of oppression and resistance in cities. He is author of Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (1997), Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (2007) and Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men From the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (2016).
In 2017, white supremacists shocked the nation by assembling in Charlottesville, VA to confront progressive activists mobilizing around anti-racist agendas and the revision of Confederate memorials. Where did these extremists come from? How had this happened? This lecture examines the rise of Anti-Semitic and racist organizations in the 1980s, such as the new KKK and the Christian Defense League, as well as left efforts to combat "hate" in the nation's cities and college campuses.