New Orleans Tricentennial
Visions of Justice
What should justice look like in New Orleans for the next three hundred years? The criminal justice system in New Orleans absorbs the lion’s share of the city’s operating budget. With new and renewed leadership in this important year in our city’s history, it is time to dig deep into what it means to build a system that delivers on the promise of fairness, justice, and safety for all New Orleanians. At the tricentennial we are asking: How will our city envision criminal justice reform in this historic moment? In these short videos, New Orleans community leaders discuss key findings from Vera’s research and share their visions for the future.
In these short videos, New Orleans community leaders discuss key findings from Vera’s research and share their visions for the future. Created and directed by Benjamin Weber with filming and editing by Voice Monet.
Slavery in Effect
A History Design Studio Briefing
People often talk about mass incarceration as if it’s just a continuation of American slavery. Historians know that’s not exactly right. Slavery was a legal system that allowed people and their descendants to be owned as chattel property forever. That all ended with the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. But if that’s not obvious to everyone, what are they seeing that historians don’t see? What insights do we gain by viewing mass incarceration as the afterlife of slavery?
Video produced by Vincent Brown and BlueSpark Collaborative; Benjamin Weber as guest scholar.
Calderwood U.S. History Series
PBS Learning Media
The Calderwood Writing Course: U.S History includes six interactive, self-paced lessons for high school students. Each lesson provides an immersive look at a key topic in U.S. history integrated with tools to develop writing skills. Lively illustrated lectures by historian Ben Weber are supplemented by a range of primary source materials, including historical documents, photographs, cartoons, and artifacts. Throughout each lesson, students prepare to write an essay in response to a compelling question. They craft their arguments around three supporting questions, using built-in online tools for note-taking, close reading, analyzing evidence, and outlining.
Produced by WGBH Boston for PBS Learning Media, with Benjamin Weber as series host.