Directory

Awards and Honors

• Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Oakland, California
• Winner, Best Biography for T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, Best Book Awards, Sponsored by American Book Fest. (2020)
• Winner, Best Biography for T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer, Independent Book Publishers Association, the largest organization of its kind (2019)
• Winner, Best Screenplay, “Keepin’ It Mighty Hot,” Alabama Writers’ Conclave, the oldest and largest organization of writers in Alabama (2017)
• Research Fellow, Earhart Foundation (1992-1993, 2002)
• Visiting Scholar, Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University (1992, 1999)
• Ellis Hawley Prize, Best Article by a Junior Scholar, Journal of Policy History (1995)
• Urban History Association Award for Best Scholarly Journal Article in Urban History (1990)
• Summer Residence Fellowship, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia (1986)
• Chair, State Advisory Committee, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Books

• The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2023).
• T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2018).
• with Linda Royster Beito, Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana, IL: University Illinois Press, 2009).
• From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
• Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).

Books (edited and co-edited)

• Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Liberty and Equality, 1942-1945 (Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, forthcoming in 2025).
• with Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok, eds. The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).

Other Publications (selected)

• “A Way Out Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Swiss Style Canton System,” 19FortyFive, June 9, 2023.
• “Using Sedition and Domestic Terrorism Laws Against Rioters is Overkill,” Washington Examiner, March 23, 2023.
• “Roads Taken, and Not Taken, from the Progressive Era to the New Deal.” In What is Classical Liberal History?, Phillip W. Magness and Michael Douma, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2018).
• “New Deal Mass Surveillance: ‘The Black Inquisition Committee,’ 1935-1936,” Journal of Policy History 30, no. 2 (Winter 2018): 169-201.
• with Marcus M. Witcher, “‘New Deal Witch Hunt’: The Buchanan Committee Investigation of the Committee for Constitutional Government,” Independent Review 21 (Summer 2016): 47-71.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “The ‘Lodger Evil’ and the Transformation of Progressive Housing Reform, 1890–1930,” Independent Review 20 (Spring 2016): 485-508.
• “Mooseheart: ‘The Child City’.” In The History of Orphanages Reconsidered, Richard McKenzie, ed. (New York: Encounter Books, 2009).
• with Linda Royster Beito, “Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty,” Independent Review 12 (Spring 2008).
• with Linda Royster Beito, “‘Let Down Your Bucket Where You Are:’ The Afro-American Hospital and Black Health Care in Mississippi, 1924-1966,” Social Science History 30 (Winter 2006), 551-69.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “Blacks, Gun Cultures and Gun Control: T.R.M. Howard, Armed Self Defense, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi,” The Journal of Firearms and Public Policy (September 2005).
• “T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954,” in Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South, Glenn Feldman, ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004).
• with Linda Royster Beito, “Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,” Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000): 555-571.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “Rival Road Builders: Private Toll Roads in Nevada, 1852-1880,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 41 (Summer 1998): 71-91.
• “From Privies to Boulevards: The Private Supply of Infrastructure in the United States during the Nineteenth Century,” in Development by Consent: The Voluntary Supply of Public Goods and Services, Jerry Jenkins and David Sisk, eds. (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1993): 23-48.
• “Six Questions for David Beito,” author of Black Maverick (interview by Scott Horton), Harper’s Magazine, June 11, 2010.
• “T.R.M. Howard, An Unlikely Civil Rights Hero,” Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2009.
• with Johnathan Bean, “A Strong Foundation [on Booker T. Washington],” National Review, March 23, 2010.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “The Christian Conservative Who Opposed the Vietnam War,” History News Network, August 21, 2006.
• with Ralph E. Luker, and Robert K. C. Johnson, “The AHA’s Double Standard on Academic Freedom,” Perspectives, March 2006.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “The Grim and Overlooked Anniversary of the Murder of the Rev. George W. Lee, Civil Rights Activist,” History News Network, May 6, 2005.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “New Probe in Till Case Unlikely to Bear Fruit,” Atlanta-Journal Constitution, May 19, 2004.
• with Linda Royster Beito, “Why It’s Unlikely the Emmett Till Murder Mystery Will Ever Be Solved,” History News Network, April 26, 2004.
• with Charles W. Nuckolls, “Getting the State of Alabama to Improve its History Standards: Victories and Defeats,” History News Network, April 9, 2004.
• with Charles Nuckolls, “Wrong Song of the South: The Dangerous Fallacies of Confederate Multiculturalism,” Reason Online, July 19, 2004.
• with Robert “KC” Johnson and Ralph E. Luker, “Why We Are Dissatisfied with the OAH’s Report on Repression,” History News Network, November 15, 2004.