Laurence Ralph

“Enslaved people began to flee harsh conditions in Virginia and South Carolina to Spanish Florida [in the 1680s]. If an enslaved person made it there and professed his belief that Roman Catholicism was "the True Faith," the Spanish colonists would set him free. As a result, the first Black town, St. Augustine, was founded by freedmen and -women in 1687.”
― Laurence Ralph, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

“My argument is straightforward. We should not allow the specter of urban violence—made more palpable with each news special and each viral video—to reify the notion of the "isolated" ghetto." That notion grows increasingly outmoded with each passing day. Instead, we should embrace the opportunities to reframe seemingly familiar narratives that...impede our understanding of how injury is experienced. [...] Attention to how multiple frameworks on the inner city collapse upon one another and become conflated will lead us to ask new questions: What are the ways in which the cell phone, in this instance, proves critical to disseminating images of (and frameworks about) gang violence?”
― Laurence Ralph, Renegade Dreams: Living through Injury in Gangland Chicago