Historians have exhaustively documented how African Americans gained access to electoral politics in the mid-1960s, but few have scrutinized what happened next. The small body of work that does consider the aftermath of the civil rights movement is almost entirely limited to the Black Power era. In Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, George Derek Musgrove pushes much further, examining black elected officials’ allegations of state and news media repression—what they called “harassment”—to gain new insight into the role of race in U.S. politics between 1965 and 1995.

Join this intimate discussion with Dr. Musgrove on his book that draws from untapped sources, including interviews conducted with twenty-five sitting and former black members of Congress. The book includes new stories that reinterpret familiar events and con­nect patterns of surveillance, counterintelligence, and disproportionate investigation of black elected officials to the broader political culture.

George Derek Musgrove, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of history at the University of the District of Columbia.

Co-sponsors: Institute for Policy Studies, Teaching for Change, and IMPACT.