Justin Randolph

Justin Randolph studies nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history. His first book, Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America's Jim Crow Countryside (2025) chronicles the rural history of white supremacist policing and the Black freedom struggles that fought for better. It tracks the rise of American paramilitary police reform from segregation to the age of mass incarceration.

Randolph's other research projects include histories of police desegregation, rural debt peonage, the Taser, and 9-1-1. His writing has appeared in scholarly outlets like the Journal of Southern History and Southern Cultures. He has also written for popular outlets such as The Washington Post, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. He has received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship and prizes from both the Southern Historical Association and Agricultural History Society.

A former first-generation transfer student, Randolph welcomes questions about the history major, minor, PhD, public history jobs, or university life generally.