Image of Christopher Hayes

Christopher Hayes

  • Assistant Teaching Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER)
Labor Education Center, 50 Labor Center Way, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8520
Education

Ph.D., Rutgers University

Curriculum Vitae - CV (PDF)

Expertise
  • Twentieth century African American and urban history
  • Policing
  • Civil rights
  • Drug policy

Chris is an historian of urban America in the 20th century. He earned a Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University, which is also his undergraduate alma mater.

His book on Columbia University Press, The Harlem Uprising – Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City, documents growing racial inequality and segregation in the fifties and sixties, and the manifold ways Black New Yorkers organized against pervasive structural racism. Problems only worsened with time, and when a white police officer shot and killed a fifteen-year-old Black boy in 1964, pent-up fury exploded into the first of the urban rebellions of the 1960s. In the aftermath, a new mayor appointed civilians to review complaints against the police, which provoked a bitter, racially divisive and successful campaign from the police union and its conservative allies to destroy the board. This history, poorly known until now, provides a clear understanding of inequities in employment, education, housing, health and criminal justice that are very much still with us today.

His teaching is primarily in labor history across time in America, with a focus on the development of the institutions and ideologies of race, class, gender, capitalism, industry and work.

Research Publications
  • The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City. New York: Columbia University Press, October 2021.
  • “Decline in an Era of Triumph: Black Workers in 1960s New York City,” Labor History 61:5-6, 486-502. Published online 12 Oct 2020. doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2020.1830956
  • “How the Police Benevolent Association Became a Political Force.” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History. Published online 10 Dec 2020. gothamcenter.org/blog/how-the-police- benevolent-association-became-a-political-force
  • “Review of Kidada E. Williams’ They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I,” The Journal of Social History, 2014. DOI 10.1093/jsh/shu062
Presentations

Academic Conferences & Invited Lectures

  • Urban History Association Biennial Conference; Paper Title: “Remembering Economic Rights as a Core Component of Civil Rights,” Detroit, Michigan, October 2020 – accepted, conference canceled
  • Labor and Working-Class History Association Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “Maintaining Jim Crow Craft Unionism in the Civil Rights Era: Showdown at Hunts Point Terminal Market,” Durham, North Carolina, June 2019
  • Urban History Association Biennial Conference; Paper Title: “’This union won’t work with nonunion men’ - Keeping Construction White in 1960s New York City,” Columbia, South Carolina, October 2018
  • Labor and Working-Class History Association Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “Police Power as Political Power – the 1966 New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board Referendum,” Seattle, Washington, June 2017
  • Conversations in Black Freedom Studies; Panel Title: “The Long Fight against New York’s Police Brutality,” The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, New York, May 2017
    livestream.com/schomburgcenter/events/7267116
  • New Jersey History Forum; Panel Title: “Social History,” Chair and Commentator, Morristown, New Jersey, November 2016
  • Urban History Association Biennial Conference; Paper Title: “Thoughts on Operation Open City and the First, Second and Third Reconstructions,” Chicago, Illinois, October 2016
  • American Historical Association Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “HANA and Heroin: Alternative Approaches to Drug Abuse in 1960s Harlem,” New York, New York, January 2015
  • Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “Internal Migration and the Rise of Black Radicalism in Postwar New York City,” Atlanta, Georgia, April 2014
  • The Red Mill Museum; Presentation Title: "Civil Rights in the Promised Land: Struggles for Racial Equality in New York and New Jersey," Clinton, New Jersey, February 2014
  • Social Science History Association Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “The Economics of Segregation in Postwar New York City,” Chicago, Illinois, November 2013
  • Educating Harlem: Histories of Learning and Schooling in an American Community; Paper Title: “Linking Postwar Educational and Residential Segregation in Central Harlem,” New York, New York, October 2013
  • Urban History Association Biennial Conference; Paper Title: “Using Place to Control Race: New York City in the Postwar Period,” New York, New York, October 2012
  • Social Science History Association Annual Meeting; Paper Title: “Hitting the Smiling Wall: Postwar Civil Rights in New York City,” Boston, Massachusetts, November 2011
  • Social Science History Association Annual Meeting; Panel Title: “Race in the Cities,” Discussant, Boston, Massachusetts, November 2011
  • Warren I. Susman Conference; Paper Title: “Black New Yorkers, White New Yorkers and the Civilian Review Board Struggle of the Mid-1960s,” New Brunswick, New Jersey, March 2011
  • Social Science History Association Annual Meeting; Panel Title: “Legacies and Predecessors of the Civil Rights Movement,” Discussant, Chicago, Illinois, November 2013
Media

Op-Eds

Media Appearances

Highlights

Awards, Grants, and Honors

Rutgers University, Institutional Conference Travel Award, 2012

Rutgers University, Departmental Conference Travel Award, 2012

Rutgers University Center for Historical Analysis Graduate Fellow, Alternate, 2010-2011

Rutgers University, Mellon Small Summer Grant Award, 2010

Rutgers University, Doctoral Fellowship, 2005-2006, 2008-2009