Katie Wu (she/her) is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Virginia in History with a certificate in American Studies. Her dissertation joins together African American history, Asian American studies, legal history, and ethnic studies to ask how a variety of "claims-seekers" sought compensation in the wake of racial violence between 1871-1924. In addition to asking questions about the relationship between racialization, citizenship, and property in post-Civil War America, her dissertation seeks to excavate the cultural and political landscape that animated early movements for reparations. She examines how African American, Chinese American, and Italian American communities fashioned arguments for redress beyond the courtroom: in political petitions, newspapers, and even movement songs. Committed to local public-facing work, Katie has conducted legal research on the sales of enslaved people in antebellum Charlottesville and co-built an oral history archive documenting environmental racism in coastal Virginia. Prior to UVA, Katie worked for the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and graduated from Harvard University's History and Literature department in 2017.