Justice 101: Reconstruction and the Origins of Modern Incarceration

Dr. Ashley Jordan is the President & CEO at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Prior to serving in this role, she served as the Executive Director for the Evansville African American Museum in Evansville, Indiana. In addition to her professional experiences in public history, she has also served as an adjunct professor for North Central State College in Mansfield, Ohio. In May of 2017, Dr. Jordan graduated with her doctorate in United States History from Howard University. She completed her undergraduate degree at Kent State University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in political science in 2008. Dr. Jordan is also the proud recipient of numerous professional, academic, and civic awards including the Pace Setter Award from the Association of African American Museums, a multiple doctoral fellowship recipient for the Filson and the Kentucky Historical Societies and the Black Excellence.

Reggie Shuford is the President & CEO of the Independence Foundation. Prior to this role, he served as the Executive Director of the North Carolina Justice Center for two years and as the Executive Director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania for over 11 years, becoming a widely admired member of Philadelphia’s public interest legal community. Shuford previously served as the Director of Law and Policy of the Equal Justice Society in San Francisco and as a Senior Staff Attorney at the National ACLU. He holds a B.A and J.D from the University of North Carolina and is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Justice Sonia Sotomayor Diversity Award and multiple Philadelphia Tribune designations as a “Most Influential African American.” Shuford has served on the Board of the Claneil Foundation and is a founding board member of New Hanover Scholars, an organization based in Wilmington, N.C., that gives grants to marginalized high school students on their way to college.

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. She was born in India and received her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. Her book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) received numerous awards and was long listed for the National Book Award for Nonfiction. It was featured as the Editor’s Choice of the New York Times Book Review and was the book of the month in Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication. The Chinese rights to The Slaves Cause has been sold to Beijing Han Tang Xhi Dao Book Distribution Co Ltd. 

She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (2000), recently named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico. She received the Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award as well as the Chancellor's Medal, the highest faculty honor, from the University of Massachusetts, where she taught for over twenty years. Her latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction 1860-1920 (2024). She is the recipient of many fellowships including the Guggenheim in 2022. She is the author and editor of numerous other books and articles. Her work has also appeared in the mainstream press, and she has been interviewed by the national and international press.