He specializes in the history and rhetoric of 20th century social justice movements and the African American and Latino experience in the United States, as well as oral history and the history of film. His first book, Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974, was published in 2013 as the inaugural volume in the Justice, Power, and Politics series at the University of North Carolina Press. He has received numerous awards, including the first annual Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Media and Civil Rights History Award for the best article on the subject. His current book project focuses on Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, and the development of the multiracial coalitions that brought Mayor Harold Washington to power in 1983.