Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s

Event Details

PBS World Channel National Broadcast:  Virginia, March 13, 2016/Nationally, March 16, 2016

 In 1950s America, it was remarkably easy for police to arrest almost anyone for almost any reason. The criminal justice system—and especially the age-old law of vagrancy—served not only to maintain safety and order but also to enforce conventional standards of morality and propriety. A person could be arrested for sporting a beard, making a speech, or working too little. Yet by the end of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were discredited and American society was fundamentally transformed. What happened? In Vagrant Nation, Risa Goluboff answers that question by showing how constitutional challenges to vagrancy laws shaped the multiple movements that made "the 1960s." Dr. Goluboff is the John Allan Love Professor of Law, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law, and Professor of History at the University of Virginia School of Law. She is also the author of The Lost Promise of Civil Rights. Photo Credit: Tom Daly