The Portal to Texas History 2023 Research Fellowship Awardee

William Robert Billups

Project Title

“Reign of Terror”: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955–1977

Project Description

Robert’s dissertation is the first comprehensive study of bombings and arsons against US civil rights activists, allies, and institutions from the mid–1950s through the mid–1970s. Using digital maps and tools, it assesses waves of white supremacist attacks and illuminates major patterns of mid-century racial violence. His dissertation also employs case studies to analyze how individuals and communities experienced anti–civil rights terrorism, resisted it, remembered it, and rebuilt in its wake.

Biography

William Robert Billups is a history PhD candidate at Emory University and an incoming 2023–2024 Ambrose Monell Foundation Funded National Fellow in Technology and Democracy at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. He researches racial violence and its effects on the civil rights movement and US law and law enforcement. Before beginning his PhD at Emory University, Robert earned a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Notre Dame and a Master’s degree in American History from the University of Cambridge. He has written public-facing scholarship for the Washington Post and peer-reviewed articles for the Journal of American History and the Journal of Southern History.