5Q with Richard F. Hamm: History, Law and the Good Society
ALBANY, N.Y. (Feb. 5, 2026) — Distinguished Teaching Professor of History and Collins Fellow Richard F. Hamm has spent his career examining the interaction of law and society in the American past, especially the 19th and 20th centuries. At UAlbany, Hamm explores how ideas, individuals and structures have combined to shape law in the United States.
Hamm’s latest book, Confronting Racism: Arthur Garfield Hays and the Fight for Equality, 1925–1954, published by SUNY Press, centers on Arthur Garfield Hays, a prominent civil liberties lawyer who challenged racial discrimination during an era shaped by segregation, global war and political repression.
Hamm’s research and teaching emphasize the real-world impact of legal ideas on everyday life. His work highlights why studying history, especially legal and social history, remains essential for understanding the challenges facing American democracy today and efforts to expand civil liberties and equality under the law.
What first drew you to Arthur Garfield Hays and why did you think his story was worth telling now?
Hays was a rich, white, corporate lawyer. He had sheltered childhood and was educated at elite schools. He opened a law practice on Wall Street and numbered big banks and mining companies among his clients. During WWI and the first Red Scare, he became a committed civil libertarian. He was an important lawyer in the American Civil Liberties Union.
I was first drawn to Hays because I’ve always thought that biography is an effective way to investigate the past. When I discovered that Hays (unlike most lawyers of the time) had left a large archive of papers I began researching in them with the hope of writing a biography. The records however didn’t prove as rich as I hoped, but they were rich enough and I began writing articles about various topics in which he played a role. And after a number of years, I began to see that there was the potential for a book about how this civil libertarian became an active opponent of segregation.
Hays believed changing the law was the best way to fight discrimination. What kinds of change can the law make?
What Hays wanted to do was remove the formal (and informal barriers) that existed in the law, so African Americans (and everyone) could be treated equally. For Hays, African Americans deserved the same civil liberties as any other group in American society. Approaching the color line from that perspective, Hays fought for African Americans’ legal rights under the Constitution, believing that if the legal barriers were removed African Americans would come to enjoy full membership in American society.
Hays did not think that law could command people to change their minds. He repeatedly said that people were entitled to their prejudices. But they shouldn’t enact them into law. Changing hearts and minds was harder, he would say, but it was worth trying through reason and kindness. He was fond quoting his great friend and hero, Clarence Darrow: “I would advise patience. I would advise toleration. I would advise understanding. I would advise all of those things which are necessary for men who live together.”
How did Hays's belief in freedom of speech, even for unpopular or offensive voices, shape his approach to race and equality?
The motivating factor for Hays’s efforts in the sphere of civil liberties was his conception of a good society, one that valued civil liberties, democracy and individualism. And what he did when it came to question of race and equality is apply those very ideas to the struggle.
Thus, police officers should treat African Americans with the same respect as they did whites, the American Bar Association should be open to African Americans, and people of color should have the right to live in the same neighborhoods as whites. He went into each of those struggles (and others detailed in the book) animated by his civil liberties ideals.
Why should we be studying someone like Hays — or legal and social history more broadly — now?
There has been a lot of talk recently about how we are living in historically dangerous times for our nation. And while not discounting that, it also is important to note that the nation and many Americans have experienced such times before.
By studying the past, we can learn a lot about how to confront the issues of today and tomorrow. Indeed, the very subjects that Hays addressed (and I cover in the book) still have salience today: police treatment of African Americans, housing discrimination, limits on African Americans in the professions, racial discrimination in the military and debates on how far government power should be extended to limit discrimination.
Also, people can take a lesson from someone like Hays. He began his activism in the Red Scare and when segregation was established in law and life. He died before Brown v. Board and while Joe McCarthy was dominating a second Red Scare. Yet, he never despaired, nor gave up and was convinced (rightly it turns out) that progress was being made.
You’ve spent your career studying how law and society shape each other. What keeps you interested in this work?
Honestly, I like learning things, I’ve never just dug in one historical area, my first book was about alcohol prohibition, my second was murder trials and press coverage and this one is about race issues. And what I’ve been interested as a scholar or teacher cross pollinates. Thus, I teach course on trials in U.S. history and another on American lawyers. How students respond in those courses, what questions they ask and how they keep up with me for years after have kept me going.
When you’re not researching or teaching, what’s something about you that students might find surprising?
I love gardening – even in graduate school I rented an urban garden plot. Now I have small vegetable plot in my backyard. There is something truly satisfying in working with my hands in the dirt.