Photo of Mary Beth Norton and Jermaine Thibodeaux at OAH-Philadelphia, 2026.

Serendipity! First time seeing my Cornell undergraduate advisor since 2004. 🥴 We were both stuck in a long line to collect our OAH badges this morning. Right place, right time, eh?! To memorialize this moment, here’s a photo with the esteemed and eminent historian of early America, Mary Beth Norton!

It should be available via JSTOR. I was able to view some chapters online a few weeks ago. And yes, books have gotten ridiculously expensive. Paid $40 for a paperback the other day. 🤦🏾‍♂️🥹

@oah.org bound!! Feel free to join our roundtable on unfree labor in the American Southwest. I will be discussing sugar and Black convicts in Texas. Come indulge and please buy our newly released book, Capturing Labor!! @utexaspress.bsky.social 💪🏾💪🏾 #OAH2026

I wish more presses would publish books this way. Have only seen LSU Press do this, and I love it!

Capturing Labor A collection of essays grappling with the many, often overlooked, forms of unfree labor in the West. When Americans think of unfree labor—coerced, extracte...

It’s here! Capturing Labor is out and ready to be consumed by the masses! Check out my chapter on the forced labor performed by Black convicts in the Texas Sugar Bowl district. Reeks of racial capitalism and gendered violence, eh?

utpress.utexas.edu/9781477333457/

Dwelling Place by Erskine Clarke

Publishing contract.

It’s official! No turning back. Ready to release my first book to the world: The House that Cane Built: Sugar, Race, and the Gendered Roots of the Texas Prison Plantation System! So grateful to the folks at @columbiaup.bsky.social 💪🏾💪🏾 Stay tuned!

Lawd, teaching Black capitalism today in my Hip-Hop and American Culture course. Restrain my tongue, oh Lord. I shall not drag Brotha Billionaire too harshly, I hope. 🤦🏾‍♂️🤭

Same. Same. As a Houston boy who took semi-annual field trips to NASA, today definitely had me a bit emotional. We can be so much greater than we’ve been lately in America. 🥹

While Washington wages war on science, NASA just sent humans to the Moon's vicinity for the first time since 1972. Bravo #TeamNASA — proof that public science, when it's funded and trusted, still does extraordinary things.

The Supreme Court Has Never Heard a Case As Easy As This One Oral argument in the birthright citizenship case will reveal just how gone this six-justice conservative supermajority really is.

Reminder: Tomorrow’s oral argument in Trump v. Barbara will not tell us whether the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship

We already know that it does, and we have known it for a long time

What it will show, though, is how far gone this Supreme Court is
ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/birth...

And formally, according to our law,
Depose him

The transatlantic slave trade is the gravest crime against humanity – why the UN declaration matters Ghana’s resolution represents a decisive step in an ongoing effort of historical reclamation and political transformation.

The transatlantic slave trade is the gravest crime against humanity – why the UN declaration matters theconversation.com/the-transatl...

BREAKING: New Mexico jury finds that Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp are harmful to children's mental health and orders Meta to pay a $375 million penalty.

Nice!

BREAKING: The Supreme Court seems skeptical of laws in 14 states that allow counting of mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.

So what happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the Voting Rights Act and birthright citizenship this term?

Preach! 💪🏾

Um, COULD?
WTAF

Texas jails’ failure to free inmates on time costing counties The state does not track the prevalence or provide guidance on the issue, leaving inmates to languish in jail and eventually sue counties for damages.

Texas jails aren’t meeting deadlines to free inmates, costing some counties thousands in settlements
www.texastribune.org/2026/03/19/t...

Wow.

Harris County commissioners approve $38 million contract renewal to keep outsourcing jail inmates | Houston Public Media The new contract ensures the county can continue outsourcing more than 1,000 inmates at the Harris County Jail to facilities in Beaumont and Louisiana until 2027 in an effort to ease crowding issues a...

Harris County commissioners approve $38 million contract renewal to keep outsourcing jail inmates

County can continue outsourcing >1,000 inmates to facilities in Beaumont & Louisiana until 2027 in an effort to ease crowding issues at the Houston jail. www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/new...

I think I am on the other side of this flu B. The body aches have subsided but this pesky cough remains. I’ll take that, I guess. 🤷🏾‍♂️

One thing I've come to realise is that people don't realise the importance of engaging with African issues in the West.

Africa is where the future is. The population is growing. It's a huge market and target for all kinds of people and things and all sorts of technological and political ideas get

This story is terrible but represents another example of the patriarchy on Leftist movements of the 1960s.

You’re dead wrong for this one!🤣🤣

Texas prepares to crack down on prisoners' most important books A group that provides books to Texas inmates says new restrictions on prison donations could hinder their work.

State prison ban on hardcovers threatens to close Texas inmate book project

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice will no longer allow hardcover or used books to be mailed to inmates starting next month. www.chron.com/culture/arti...

Long Before MAGA’s White Grievance, There Was Bernie Goetz In 1984, a white man named Bernie Goetz shot four unarmed black youths on a New York City subway train. The tabloids hailed him as a fed-up everyman — rhetoric that permeated the culture and intensifi...

Long Before MAGA’s White Grievance, There Was Bernie Goetz

1984: a white man named Bernie Goetz shot 4 unarmed black youths on a NYC subway train. The tabloids hailed him as a fed-up everyman — rhetoric that intensified a culture of white grievance & racist vigilantism jacobin.com/2026/03/goet...

A cold during Spring Break is diabolical. 🤦🏾‍♂️🥹

The Jim Crow Economy Is the True Horror in 'Sinners' The film illustrates the near-impossibility of upward mobility during the segregation era.

I have seen very few movies this year so I can't really judge the oscars, but one of the movies I did see was Sinners, and its portrayal of the Jim Crow economy is the film's driving force, even more than its supernatural elements www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...