In Conversation with Dr. Menika Dirkson (Morgan State), author of "Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia" (NYU Press, 2024)

 

Dr. Menika Dirkson is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Geography at Morgan State University in Maryland. Dr. Dirkson is a Philadelphia native, and earned her PhD in History at Temple University. Find out more about her upcoming work here.

 

Her recent book, Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia (NYU Press, 2024), "explores how concerns about poverty-induced Black crime cultivated by police, journalists, and city officials sparked a rise in tough-on-crime policing in Philadelphia." The book received an Honorable Mention (2025) in the Joe Trotter First Book Award category, given by the Urban History Association. In her review, UPenn's Akira Drake Rodriguez noted that Dirkson's book, "offers a strong argument for how self-reinforcing anti-crime policies perpetuate increasing violence and crime in over-policed and surveilled communities. Through an abolitionist framing and methodology, the book challenges declension narratives of majority-Black cities that suggest policing was a response to, as opposed to the cause of, destabilized and disinvested Black communities." Find Dr. Dirkson's website here, and her faculty page at Morgan State here. And find the book here at the publisher's website.

 

Series organizers (alphabetical) are Amber Broaden (CSUSB and CSU Dominguez Hills, Psychology), Stan Futch (President, Westside Action Group), Michael German (Brennan Center for Justice), Robie Madrigal (Pfau Library), Dr. Jeremy Murray (CSUSB History), Matt Patino (Crafton Hills College Adjunct Faculty), Dr. Mary Texeira (CSUSB Sociology). Click here to view previous  and upcoming panels in the Conversations on Race and Policing series (link).