THE
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY PRESENTS: A
SPEAKS-WARNOCK LECTURE
In
this lecture, Dr. Destin Jenkins centers the history of bond financing and its
imperatives to reveal the hidden strings that bind debt and power, race and
inequality, democracy and capitalism. He demonstrates how the business
of municipal debt, and the ethical dimensions of borrowing and investing,
proved a durable mechanism of inequality in twentieth century America. He also
uncovers an often-ignored dimension of the Black freedom struggle: the
financial activism and fiscal inquests of Black Americans who worked mightily
to undermine Jim Crow in its various forms.
Destin
Jenkins is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University.
In addition to his first book, The
Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University
of Chicago Press, 2021), he is the co-editor of Histories of Racial Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2021)
and the principal investigator and curator of The Business of Debt: A Digital Investigation of Municipal Bonds and
Inequality. He has served as capitalism
series editor at Public Books,
and is co-editor of Just Money.
His writing has appeared in the Washington
Post, The Nation, and the New York Times.