Peek in the Stacks

In 1887, after Reconstruction, a black man named Robert Creecy purchased a parcel of Canebrake Plantation land in Louisiana from Florestan Waggenspauch. Creecy sold half the parcel to another buyer, while retaining ownership of the remaining land. In 1898, Creecy's son-in-law, a 25-year-old black man with indigenous ancestry named Robert Celestin, purchased the half parcel of land back...

In 1976, the LAPD executed a raid on a “slave auction” with 120 officers, two helicopters, and invited videographers and photographers. Forty men were arrested, one of whom requested a copy of the police report after his release. Part of the Aristide Laurent Collection, it paints a specific picture of that night. In this episode....

he notion of “Queering the page” transcends topics of gender and sexuality to include instances of hegemonic or heteronormative disruption that push back against dominant ideologies of power. The episode “Queering the Page and the Nature of Disruption” begins with an analysis of two legal documents (this Affidavit and this Summons), the first of which queers kinship....

When passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 ushered in the era of Prohibition in the United States, an English bartender named Harry Craddock, who had mixed drinks at the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, OH and the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City, left the US and returned to the UK so he continue working in his chosen profession...