Books by Thomas J Adams
Journal Articles/Chapters by Thomas J Adams
American Historical Review, 2023
On November 24, 2020, the nine members of the New Orleans City Council Street Renaming Commission... more On November 24, 2020, the nine members of the New Orleans City Council Street Renaming Commission gathered for a public meeting on Zoom to cast their votes for thirty-seven new honorees for streets and parks in the city. That November meeting was a key milestone in an intensive process that began the previous summer. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, as well as in the context of local political rivalries, the New Orleans City Council passed an ordinance calling for the renaming of streets, parks, and official public places that honored people who participated in the Confederate insurrection, attempted to violently thwart democracy in the aftermath of the Civil War, or actively violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution during the consolidation and rule of the Jim Crow regime. The ordinance also established the City Council Renaming Commission (CCSRC), tasked with both confirming which street and park names fit within the remit for renaming and proposing new names to the council. We had been involved in this process from the beginning, first being asked to help design the process and draft ordinance language, and later acting as co-chairs of the group of scholars-officially known as the CCSRC Panel of Experts-that advised the commission. For each of those thirty-seven sites, the panel gave the commission three different possibilities, each with a roughly one-thousand-word descriptive biography of each name's historical importance and a publicly accessible bibliography. We intended to animate a public engagement strategy and commission deliberations that engaged with proposed honorees as part of a broader exploration of New Orleans history. Commission members were provided with drafts of this document weeks in advance and the final version two days beforehand. The final version, which was the product of collective research and writing on the part of more than forty scholars, community members, and students, included a few biographies that had not been finalized in previous drafts. In most cases, this was because of the kind of deadline cat-wrangling that anyone who has ever edited a journal or book with dozens of contributors can appreciate. However, in the case of four potential new eponyms-known to us only by their first names as Celestin, Georges, Jasper, and Margaret Elizabeth-it was the result of scant archival documentation and our
PS: Political Science and Politics, 2020
Neoliberal Cities: The Remaking of Postwar Urban America, 2020
New Orleans Street Renaming Commission Expert's Report, 2020
How do we do justice to the centuries of history that have unfolded on these 350 square miles of ... more How do we do justice to the centuries of history that have unfolded on these 350 square miles of land surrounding the Mississippi River? What is the relationship between this diverse history, its reflection in our city's officially named spaces and places, and the values we strive to enact as a community? This report, prepared with the input of more than forty of the city's leading scholars and writers, themselves drawing on more than a century of the most cutting-edge historical and cultural interpretation, offers no definitive answers to these questions. We have been guided throughout though by the conviction that asking these questions, developing a collaborative process, telling the multitudinous stories contained in this report, and reconsecrating some of the spaces in this city is an imperative as New Orleans enters its fourth century of existence as a city. The collective 111 suggestions for renaming streets and parks below makes no claim toward being a definitive history of the city. For every musical innovator like Jelly Roll Morton, Mahalia Jackson, or Mac Rebennack included there is a Bunk Johnson, Emma Jackson, Ernie K-Doe and countless others who have been left out. The four individuals included who fled the men who owned them as slaves near present-day Lakeview are but four of the thousands in this city's history whose collective individual actions over centuries forced a reluctant nation to finally begin to live up to its highest ideals. The rolls of the First Louisiana Native Guard of the U.S. Army who defended the city from a treasonous insurrection and the members of the Metropolitan Police who held off an attempted coup in 1874 are filled with men whose lives are as heroic and poetic as those of Andre Cailloux, James Ingraham, and Rodolphe Desdunes. We are blessed to live in a place where our neighbors include countless unassuming heroes like Julia Aaron, whose willingness to put her body on the line brought the promise of freedom that much closer to reality; or Sherwood Gagliano, who sounded an early alarm on the greatest existential threat this city has ever faced. In recommending each name for each street, place, or park we have followed several key themes; offering a coherent reordering of spatial naming in keeping with the patterns currently in place, while allowing for the exploration of individual narratives which expand upon the range of historical figures recognized and honored for their roles in shaping our city. The four streets in present day Lakeview named for leaders of the 1861-1865 treason against the United States were all dedicated as part of an explicit attempt to rewrite this history of treason and defy the 14 th and 15 th Amendments to the US Constitution via segregation and disenfranchisement. In their place we have offered three alternative sets of names, each set thematically linked: one set of military leaders that helped put down that treason and via their very presence as officers transformed the meaning of the war; one set of slaves who attempted to self-emancipate and had a connection to present-day Lakeview; and one set of musicians.
Journal of American Studies, 2018
Australasian Journal of American Studies, 2017
Australasian Journal of American Studies, 2017
What's New About the New Immigration, Marilynn Halter et al eds., 2014
Hurricane Katrina in Transatlantic Perspective, eds. Romain Huret and Randy Sparks, 2014
Labor, 2013
During its five-season HBO run, David Simon and Ed Burns's serial drama The Wire inspired superla... more During its five-season HBO run, David Simon and Ed Burns's serial drama The Wire inspired superlative praise from critics and scholars alike. As Nicholas Kulish wrote on the New York Times opinion page, " if Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch 'The Wire,' unless, that is, he was already writing for it. " 1 The Wire's critical success is not hard to understand. The focused themes of each season — police, unions, politics, schools, and media — give the show an intellectual arc that appeals to media scholars and critics. The show is equally entertaining, with individual episodes impressively shot, filled with well-written dialogue, strongly developed characters, and generally evincing an entertainment value that rivals the best and most compelling of police procedural dramas. For those on the progressive and labor left, the show has developed a cult status as well, both because of its aforementioned qualities — indeed, the show's popularity among those of us who consider ourselves progressives cannot be divorced from the fact that it is good, solid entertainment — and its astute analyses of modern American politics, economics, and racism. The show's gritty depiction of the modern deindustrialized city, its unabashed criticism of neoliberal disinvestment in social programs, and general disdain for identity politics has driven it to almost mythic status among many progressive thinkers. At the same time, The Wire often evinced nostalgia for a past of unionized jobs, government that works, and a more economically and socially functional version of the urban experience that appeals to critics of the post-1970s right turn in American politics, economics, and social life. The Wire's analysis of the interrelationships among the state, market capitalism , labor, racism, and the urban environment rivals that of many academic experts and certainly has gained a larger audience and a longer reach. The show has inspired overwhelmingly popular courses at universities around the country and a host of high-powered and well-publicized academic conferences. For evidence of its growing Labor Published by Duke University Press
Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First Century Capitalism, Nelson Lichtenstein ed., 2006
Popular/Opinion/Newspaper Publications by Thomas J Adams
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Books by Thomas J Adams
Journal Articles/Chapters by Thomas J Adams
Popular/Opinion/Newspaper Publications by Thomas J Adams