About Brandon Jett

I received my PhD in History from the University of Florida in 2017 and current work as a Professor of History at Florida SouthWestern State College. I am an award-winning scholar, writer, and teacher of American history and crime, violence, and criminal justice in the United States, particularly focusing on the American South. My first book, Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South, came out in July 2021. I've also been engaged with public work and writing over the last year. I've work has been featured in numerous venues, including the Washington Post, Ft. Myers News-Press, and WGCU.

Brandon T. Jett, professor of history at Florida SouthWestern State College, creator of the Lynching in LaBelle Digital History Project, and author of Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South (LSU Press, 2021) and co-editor of Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Violent Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020 (Texas A&M University Press, scheduled Spring 2023). Twitter: @DrBrandonJett1.

Brandon's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Brandon:

Alejandra Dubcovsky, "Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South" (Yale UP, 2023)

October 13, 2023

Talking Back

Alejandra Dubcovsky
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Historian Alejandra Dubcovsky tells a story of war, slavery, loss, remembrance, and the women whose resilience and resistance transformed the colonial…

Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, "Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

March 27, 2023

Southern Beauty

Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's book Southern Beauty: Race, Ritual, and Memory in the Modern South (U Georgia Press, 2022) explains a curiosity: why a femini…

M. V. Hood and Seth C. McKee, "Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South: The Untold Story" (U South Carolina Press, 2022)

February 8, 2023

Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South

M. V. Hood and Seth C. McKee
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Beginning with the Dixiecrat Revolt of 1948 and extending through the 2020 election cycle, political scientists M.V. Hood III and Seth C. McKee trace …

Virginia L. Summey, "The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts" (U Georgia Press, 2022)

December 7, 2022

The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander

Virginia L. Summey
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Virginia L. Summey's book The Life of Elreta Melton Alexander: Activism within the Courts (U Georgia Press, 2022) explores the life and contributions …

David Silkenat, "Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" (Oxford UP, 2022)

November 10, 2022

Scars on the Land

David Silkenat
Hosted by Brandon Jett

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people fo…

Jodi Skipper, "Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race, and Heritage in the U.S. South" (U Iowa Press, 2022)

September 9, 2022

Behind the Big House

Jodi Skipper
Hosted by Brandon Jett

When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives o…

Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross, "Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

May 31, 2022

Becoming Free, Becoming Black

Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross
Hosted by Brandon Jett

How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge UP…

John S. Huntington, "Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

April 19, 2022

Far-Right Vanguard

John S. Huntington
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Donald Trump shocked the nation in 2016 by winning the presidency through an ultraconservative, anti-immigrant platform, but, despite the electoral su…

K. Stephen Prince, "The Ballad of Robert Charles: Searching for the New Orleans Riot Of 1900" (UNC Press, 2021)

March 17, 2022

The Ballad of Robert Charles

K. Stephen Prince
Hosted by Brandon Jett

For a brief moment in the summer of 1900, Robert Charles was arguably the most infamous black man in the United States. After an altercation with poli…

Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, "Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching" (Verso, 2021)

February 15, 2022

Elegy for Mary Turner

Rachel Marie-Crane Williams
Hosted by Brandon Jett

In late May 1918 in Valdosta, Georgia, ten Black men and one Black woman—Mary Turner, eight months pregnant at the time—were lynched and tortured by m…

Fay A. Yarbrough, "Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country" (UNC Press, 2021)

January 26, 2022

Choctaw Confederates

Fay A. Yarbrough
Hosted by Brandon Jett

When the Choctaw Nation was forcibly resettled in Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s, it was joined by enslaved Black people—the tr…

Edward L. Ayers, "Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020" (LSU Press, 2020)

December 8, 2021

Southern Journey

Edward L. Ayers
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Taking a wide focus, Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020 (LSU Press, 2020) narrates the evolution of southern history fr…

Guy Lancaster, "American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching" (U Arkansas Press, 2021)

October 26, 2021

American Atrocity

Guy Lancaster
Hosted by Brandon Jett

Lynching is often viewed as a narrow form of violence: either the spontaneous act of an angry mob against accused individuals, or a demonstration of w…