Christopher Hayes

Chris is an historian of urban America in the 20th century. He earned a PhD in American history from Rutgers University, which is also his undergraduate alma mater. His book, The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City, documents growing racial inequality and segregation in the fifties and sixties, and the manifold ways Black New Yorkers organized against pervasive structural racism. Problems only worsened with time, and when a white police officer shot and killed a fifteen-year-old Black boy in 1964, pent-up fury exploded into the first of the urban rebellions of the 1960s. In the aftermath, a new mayor appointed civilians to review complaints against the police, which provoked a bitter, racially divisive and successful campaign from the police union and its conservative allies to destroy the board. This history, poorly known until now, provides a clear understanding of inequities in employment, education, housing, health and criminal justice that are very much still with us today. His teaching is primarily in labor history across time in America, with a focus on the development of the institutions and ideologies of race, class, gender, capitalism, industry and work.