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.
Professor Dirkson spent her residency at Yale working on her second book project, “The Graffiti Squad,” which examines police and community response to the teenage graffiti artists in Philadelphia, New York City, and Baltimore from the 1960s to 1980s.The book traces the creation of specialized “graffiti squads” within police departments; these squads surveilled neighborhoods known for graffiti activity and sought to arrest the young people involved. Alongside this history of urban policing, Dirkson highlights the efforts of community members, teachers, and artists who developed constructive alternatives—among them Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program that enlisted young graffiti artists to create murals around the city. She notes that murals were rarely tagged, reflecting a sense of respect for artwork created by and for the people in the community. A central argument of the book is that meaningful investment in youth and community programming can often be more effective in preventing crime than punitive approaches alone.
During her fellowship, Professor Dirkson participated actively in the weekly WHC Fellows Forum, where faculty fellows present new work and receive feedback. She presented one aspect of her extensive archival research in a fellows talk: “The ‘Little Old Ladies’ against the Muggers: The Granny and Grandpop Decoy Squads of the Philadelphia Police Department, 1967–1984.”She also made extensive use of Yale’s libraries and collections, including the John Vliet Lindsay Papers, the Frank Donner Papers, and the Alexander M. Bickel Papers.