Steve Babson, author of Forgotten Populists: When Farmers Turned Left to Save Democracy, will join with Peter Hammer, co-author of No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr., to talk about the Red Scare’s long history in the United States. 

Steve and Peter will explore what it meant to confront and resist “the Great Fear," from the violent suppression of Populism’s multiracial movement in the South during the 1890s, to the post-World War II Red Scare that targeted progressives and civil rights activists. 

About the Author

Steve Babson is a retired labor educator and union activist living in Detroit with his wife, Nancy Brigham. He received his doctorate in U.S. History in 1989 from Wayne State University, where he worked from 1983 to 2006 as an instructor and extension program coordinator in the Labor Studies Center. During most of these years, Steve was an officer of Local 6075, AAUP/AFT, representing faculty and academic staff at Wayne State. He has published six books, including Working Detroit: The Making of a Union Town; Lean Work: Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry; and The Color of Law: Ernie Goodman and the Struggle for Labor and Civil Rights in Detroit.

About Peter Hammer

Peter J. Hammer is the A. Alfred Taubman Professor of Law and director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School. Peter and Edward J. Littlejohn are co-authors of No Equal Justice, The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr.