# Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026) Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-law-435148/justin-randolph-mississippi-law-policing-and-reform-in-america-s-jim-crow-countryside-unc-press-2026 Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-law-435148/justin-randolph-mississippi-law-policing-and-reform-in-america-s-jim-crow-countryside-unc-press-2026.md Podcast: [New Books in Law](https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-law-435148) Published: 2026-05-17T08:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK5009168709.mp3 Audio file: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK5009168709.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-law-435148/episodes/justin-randolph-mississippi-law-policing-and-reform-in-america-s-jim-crow-countryside-unc-press-2026 Duration seconds: 4129 ## Resource Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026), his new book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, told through the lens of that state’s highway patrol. Using oral history and a wide range of archival sources, Randolph narrates efforts by elites in Mississippi to modernize the police while maintaining social hierarchies, as well as efforts on the part of Black Mississippians to envision a world without police. Highlights include: What a focus on state-level policing adds to our understanding of policing; How the founding of the Mississippi highway patrol brought together various forms of policing in the Southwest, including the Texas rangers; A surprisingly robust discussion of cows, including Mississippi’s economic transformation to a center of cattle raising and the rise of cattlemen’s “Massive Resistance” in the 1950s; What Nina Simone revealed about policing in Mississippi, and the myth of Southern exceptionalism, in her song “Mississippi Goddam.” Guest: Justin Randolph is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, and his other research projects include histories of police desegregation, rural debt peonage, the Taser, and 9-1-1. His writing has appeared in scholarly outlets like the Journal of Southern History and Southern Cultures. He has also written for popular outlets such as The Washington Post, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. He has received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship and prizes from both the Southern Historical Association and Agricultural History Society. Host: Michael Stauch is an associate professor of… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-law-435148/episodes/justin-randolph-mississippi-law-policing-and-reform-in-america-s-jim-crow-countryside-unc-press-2026/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-law-435148/justin-randolph-mississippi-law-policing-and-reform-in-america-s-jim-crow-countryside-unc-press-2026.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.