Roger Lane

Research Professor of Social Sciences

Roger Lane is a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Speaker for the year 2008-2009 and on the "Distinguished Lecturers" list of the Organization of American Historians. As social and cultural historian, he has won the prestigious Bancroft Award from the Trustees of Columbia University, (1987), and the Best Book Award from the Urban History Association, (1992). His major publications have involved the study of police, crime, and violence, urban and ethnic history. Named by the Philadelphia Inquirer as one of the top ten teaching professors in the Philadelphiametropolitan area, at Haverford College he has won the Lindback Teaching Award, the Students's Association Award for Community Service, and an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

In addition to many articles and several edited books, major publications include: 

• Policing the City: Boston 1822-1885 (1967).
• Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident Murder in 19th Century Philadelphia (1979).
• Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia (1986), winner of the 1987 Bancroft Award.
• William Dorsey's Philadelphia Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America (1991), winner of the 1992 Urban History Association's award.
• Murder in America: A History (1997), named by the Knight-Rider chain as one of the top ten books in Contemporary Affairs category for the year 1997.

Television Documentaries:

• "PBS: History Detectives," Lion Television. TBA 8/21/06
• "Al Capone/Elliot Ness" JAK Films, Inc.
• "Police", produced by Kurtis Productions Ltd.
• "Gunfighters of the West", DVTV.
• "The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden", by Pangolin Productions.
• "Behind The Badge", by JWM Productions.
• "The Untouchables", by Pangolin Productions.
• "True Stories of the NYPD", Barbara Newman Productions.
• "Invitation to a Lynching", Full Circle Productions.