Feb 03 2025 39 mins 1
On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Jean Pfaelzer, award-winning historian and Professor Emerita of English, Asian Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, about her 2023 book, California, A Slave State, which investigates California’s histories of enslavement. Together, they discuss: why California merits the designation as a slave state; the history of the 18th century Spanish missions and their brutal treatment of Indigenous people; the “slave rectangle” of Alaska, California, China, and Russia; the “California Genocide” of Indigenous peoples during the gold rush; the historical treatment of Chinese women in California; and why California currently has the largest number of human trafficking cases of any state in the United States.
