California Legislation, Governance, and Statehood

This is a project based on the work of On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance at the University of North Carolina Libraries to analyze California laws for Jim Crow language. It complements the current work in KSR connecting legislation and other policy documents to people, places and events. Until now, KSR data collection and analysis has been focused on very recent history. We have collected policy and training manuals from law enforcement agencies across California, extracted named entities from those documents, and have begun to connect them to people, places, events, and related legislation. With this data project, we will be able to turn our attention to the first century of legislation in the state, 1850-1967.

We are hopeful that identifying Jim Crow language in California legislation will enable KSR to illuminate how white supremacy and segregation statutes during the Jim Crow era are connected to current racialized policing. We are also keen to document California’s uniquely hidden or hard to identify Jim Crow residential segregation. Identifying laws likely to be Jim Crow laws will support the larger project of KSR to reveal the connections, throughout the history of the state, between legislation, law enforcement, and the social underpinnings of California’s color line.