Emily Prifogle, Racial Boundaries across the Heartland’s Legal Landscapes in the 20th Century

Emily Prifogle was our fourth speaker in the Rural Law and Policy Series. She is a legal historian at the University of Michigan Law School. Her talk, Racial Boundaries across the Heartland's Legal Landscapes in the Twentieth Century, can be viewed by clicking below:

bio

Emily Prifogle is a legal historian and assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School. There she teaches a seminar on rural law. Her current book project, The Heartland’s Legal Landscapes & the Remaking of Modern Rural America, 1920-2020, looks at legal efforts to remake rural communities in the Midwest during the first 100 years of a majority urban nation. She uses on-the-ground historical studies to tell a new legal history of a rural Midwest in a constant process of legal transformation along lines of class, race, and gender. 

abstract

The rural Midwest in the popular imagination, and very often in reality, is overwhelmingly a White space. That’s no accident. At the same time, rural communities in the Midwest, today and in the past, are far more racially diverse than often expected. This talk acknowledges the latter while examining the former by assessing how the law played a central role in maintaining rural communities as White spaces throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on examples of education policy, social safety-nets, legal practice, federal Indian law, and local land use ordinances, the talk will reveal how rural White spaces were intentionally constructed through local, state, and federal law. The talk assesses how racialized legal strategies have benefited rural communities as they faced challenges of economic inequality and how the results have hurt especially vulnerable rural populations of color. 

other work by Emily Prifogle

You can find more of Emily Prifogle’s work here.

Emily Prifogle also shares several other interesting teaching, media, and writing projects at her own website, here.