Megan Ming Francis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and is also the Field Director for History and Political Development at the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR). Francis specializes in the study of American politics, social movements, and the development of constitutional law. She is particularly interested in the construction of rights and citizenship, black political activism, and the post-civil war South.
Born and raised in Seattle, WA, she is a proud alumnus of Seattle Public Schools, Rice University in Houston, and Princeton University where she received her Ph.D. in Politics. She is the author of the multiple-award winning book, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (2014). This book tells the story of how the early campaign against state sanctioned racial violence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shaped the modern civil rights movement. Departing with studies that place education and the landmark case Brown v. Board at the center of how to understand the NAACP and rights making in the United States—Francis marshals an extensive archival analysis to show that the battle against lynching and mob violence in the first quarter of the 20th century were pivotal to the development of civil rights and the growth of federal court power. Francis is currently at work on a second book project that examines the role of the criminal justice system in the rebuilding of southern political and economic power after the Civil War.
