Menika B. Dirkson

Menika B. Dirkson is an associate professor of African American History at Morgan State University. She is the author of the 2024 book Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia. Dirkson is currently researching race, crime, graffiti, and policing surrounding the public transportation system in post–1958 Philadelphia.

During her residency at the Whitney Humanities Center, Dirkson will be working on her second monograph, The Graffiti Squad, which explores the graffiti art movement among teenagers during the 1960s through the 1980s. The narrative will not only discuss how “broken windows policing” drove Philadelphia’s police department to create a special squad in 1971 to police “wall writers,” but also explore how community activists, teachers, and professional artists worked with former wall writers to create murals across the city through organizations like the Mural Arts Program and in unregulated industrial spaces like Graffiti Pier. This project will also look at how the modern graffiti to public art movement migrated and evolved in New York and Baltimore. Moreover, at the core of this book project, Dirkson argues that government spending on crime prevention and poverty alleviation is more effective than spending on the apprehension of suspects after a crime is committed. Her research shows that cities should financially invest heavily in schools, recreation centers, arts and sports programs, job training, and libraries rather than police and prisons because it is cheaper and makes our society safer and more productive than one committed to racial capitalism and the proliferation of concentrated poverty.