Professor Cunningham’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial contention, with an emphasis on the scope and legacy of organized white supremacist action.
David Cunningham is Professor and past Chair of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research has investigated FBI repression of social movements as well as organized white supremacist campaigns by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups, and currently focuses on how legacies of historical violence and division shape ongoing inequalities. Interests around the latter have also bridged into the study of contested sites of public memory, including those involving Confederate monuments in the U.S. South and political murals in Northern Ireland.
He is the author of There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence and the award-winning Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era KKK, and more recently he has co-edited a special journal issue on “Legacies of Racial Violence.” Ongoing studies on the spread of 19th century newspaper accounts of racial terror lynching and on contested historical spaces are supported by the Mellon Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
David is currently the Chair-Elect of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements. Building on prior public-facing work with the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Mississippi Truth Project, he most recently has served on the City of St. Louis Reparations Commission and as an instructor and board member for Washington University’s Prison Education Project.
