"From Ferguson to Staten Island, the #blacklivesmatter campaign has put the treatment of Black people in the criminal justice system front and center in public conversation. Police brutality and the unequal treatment of Black people in the criminal justice system have a long history in the United States; as do campaigns to challenge it. Join us for an exciting two-month conversation where we explore this bigger history of mass incarceration; the racial inequalities of policing, prosecution and sentencing; the long history of political prisoners; and the campaigns of resistance built by black communities and prisoners themselves from the civil rights era to today.

We are joined by six authors of important books that are must-reads for people interested in the long history of racial inequality and Black resistance in the criminal justice system: Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy); Dan Berger (Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era), Vikki Law (Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women) in March; Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California ); Laura Whitehorn (The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, and Fighting for Those Left Behind) and Arun Kundnani (The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror)."

-- Jeanne Theoharris and Komozi Woodard