Ohio Wesleyan Professor Featured in New York Times
Michael W. Flamm, Ph.D.
DELAWARE, Ohio – Ohio Wesleyan University history professor Michael W. Flamm writes in today’s New York Times that 50 years ago, “an off-duty white police officer, Lt. Thomas Gilligan, shot and killed a black student, James Powell, outside an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Hundreds of his classmates took to the streets in protest.”
The incident, states Flamm, Ph.D., an expert in modern U.S. political history and the 1960s, “was soon forgotten, overshadowed by more deadly rebellions and other ‘long hot summers’ in Los Angeles, Newark, and Detroit. But in an important sense, James Powell was the first casualty in a larger conflict that has subsequently done great harm to generations of African-Americans.”
Flamm, a member of the Ohio Wesleyan faculty since 1998, is preparing to publish a book on the topic, “In the Heat of the Summer: The Harlem Riot of 1964 and the Road to America’s Prison Crisis.” He also is the author or co-author of numerous articles and books, including “Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Unrest, and the Crisis of Liberalism in the 1960s” (2005), “Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives” (2007), and “Debating the Reagan Presidency” (2009).
Flamm is a former Fulbright Senior Scholar and Fulbright Scholarship recipient. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and his Master of Arts, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University.
In his New York Times op-ed, Flamm encourages the nation to learn from history, including Powell’s death, as it seeks to deal with important issues of social justice.
“Today, as we seek to reduce incarceration rates that keep millions of blacks, many of them nonviolent offenders, behind bars, we need to re-examine the historical roots of the law-and-order policies that drove up those rates, and the way in which those policies, instead of being race-neutral responses to rising crime, were tightly interwoven with the politics of civil rights,” Flamm concludes.
Read the complete New York Times op-ed, “The Original Long, Hot Summer: The Legacy of the 1964 Harlem Riot.” Learn more about Flamm and Ohio Wesleyan Department of History.
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts universities. Located in Delaware, Ohio, the private, coed university offers more than 90 undergraduate majors, minors, and concentrations, and competes in 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. Ohio Wesleyan combines a challenging, internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities to connect classroom theory with real-world practice. OWU’s 1,850 students represent 42 states and 37 countries. Ohio Wesleyan is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the 2013 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, and included in the U.S. News & World Report and Princeton Review “best colleges” lists. Learn more at www.owu.edu.