Andrew L. Grim

Biography

Andrew Grim’s teaching and research interests focus on twentieth-century African American history, the carceral state, cities, and social movements and activism. His current manuscript project, The City is Ours: Black Political Power and the Struggle Against Police Brutality in Postwar Newark, uses Newark as a case study to examine the role that police played in enshrining a two-tiered system of citizenship in the urban north in the postwar era, and in resisting the ascendancy of Black political power in American cities in the early 1970s. Through oral histories, city archives, and the records of various organizations and activists, The City is Ours highlights the ways in which a wide-variety of Black-led organizations responded to systemic police abuse in postwar Newark and traces the role that class and ideological orientation played in shaping African American responses to the problem of police brutality. In addition to survey courses on African American history since the Civil War, he teaches courses on race and the carceral state; African Americans in urban America; and African American history since the Civil Rights Movement, among other topics. Andrew Grim is also a public historian, utilizing history to comment on contemporary issues related to politics and culture in numerous media outlets including, the Washington Post, Black Perspectives, and the Metropole.