Race to Injustice by
A collection of essays that examine various failings and problems in the American criminal-justice system that were revealed in the prosecution and handling of the case of an African-American exotic dancer who falsely accused three members of the Duke lacrosse team of rape.
Black Rage in New Orleans by
In Black Rage in New Orleans, Leonard N. Moore traces the shocking history of police corruption in the Crescent City from World War II to Hurricane Katrina and the concurrent rise of a large and energized black opposition to it. In New Orleans, crime, drug abuse, and murder were commonplace, and an underpaid, inadequately staffed, and poorly trained police force frequently resorted to brutality against African Americans. Endemic corruption among police officers increased as the city's crime rate soared, generating anger and frustration among New Orleans's black community. Rather than remain passive, African Americans in the city formed antibrutality organizations, staged marches, held sit-ins, waged boycotts, vocalized their concerns at city council meetings, and demanded equitable treatment.
The Condemnation of Blackness by
The Idea of Black Criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America. Khalil Gibran Muhammad chronicles how, when, and why modern notions of black people as an exceptionally dangerous race of criminals first emerged. Well known are the lynch mobs and racist criminal justice practices in the South that stoked white fears of black crime and shaped the contours of the New South. In this illuminating book, Muhammad shifts our attention to the urban North as a crucial but overlooked site for the production and dissemination of those ideas and practices. Following the 1890 census - the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery - crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society.
Southern Horrors by
Between 1880 and 1930, close to 200 women were murdered by lynch mobs in the American South. Many more were tarred and feathered, burned, whipped, or raped. In this brutal world of white supremacist politics and patriarchy, a world violently divided by race, gender, and class, black and white women defended themselves and challenged the male power brokers. Crystal Feimster breaks new ground in her story of the racial politics of the postbellum South by focusing on the volatile issue of sexual violence.
The Eve of Destruction by
In this book the author argues that 1965, not 1968, was the most transformative year of the 1960s, discussing attacks on civil rights demonstrators, increased African American militancy, the Watts riots, anti-war protests, and a growing national pessimism. 1965 marked the birth of the tumultuous era we now know as "The Sixties," when American society and culture underwent a major transformation. Turmoil erupted in the American South early in the year, when police attacked civil rights demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. Many black leaders, outraged, began to lose faith in nonviolent and interracial strategies of protest. Meanwhile, the U.S. rushed into a deadly war in Vietnam, inciting rebelliousness at home.
Peculiar Institution by
This book describes and explains the institution of capital punishment in the United States, and discusses its relationship to American society. For many Europeans, the persistence of America's death penalty is a stark reminder of American otherness. The practice of state killing is an archaic relic, a hollow symbol that accomplishes nothing but reflects a puritanical, punitive culture, bloodthirsty in its pursuit of retribution. In debating capital punishment, the usual rhetoric points to America's deviance from the western norm: civilized abolition and barbaric retention; 'us' and 'them'. This new study by a leading social thinker sweeps aside the familiar story and offers a compelling interpretation of the culture of American punishment. It shows that the same forces that led to the death penalty's abolition in Europe once made America a pioneer of reform.
The Suburb Reader by
According to the 2000 Census, fifty percent of Americans live in suburbs, signifying a dramatic reversal of patterns since the 1920s. This work collects the best writings on such suburbs and includes scholarly essays, documents, and magazine and newspaper articles.
Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi by
"In 1960, students supporting civil rights moved into Mississippi and challenged white supremacy by encouraging African Americans to reassert the rights guaranteed them under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The ensuing social upheaval changed the state forever. In Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi, James P. Marshall, a former civil rights activist, tells the complete story of the quest for racial equality in Mississippi. Using a variety of sources as well as his own memories, Marshall weaves together an astonishing account of student protestors and local activists who risked their lives by fighting against southern resistance and federal inaction. Their efforts, and the horrific violence inflicted on them, helped push many non-southerners and the federal government into action, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act--measures that destroyed legalized segregation and disfranchisement."
Life upon These Shores by
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated, landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship, and including more than eight hundred images--ancient maps, art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters--Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of hip-hop on to the Joshua generation. By documenting and illuminating the sheer diversity of African American involvement in American history, society, politics, and culture, Gates bracingly disabuses us of the presumption of a single "Black Experience." Life Upon These Shores is a book of major importance, a breathtaking tour de force of the historical imagination
Mary Turner and the Memory of Lynching by
[This book] traces the reactions of activists, artists, writers, and local residents to the brutal lynching of a pregnant woman near Valdosta, Georgia. In 1918, the murder of a white farmer led to a week of mob violence that claimed the lives of at least eleven African Americans, including Hayes Turner. When his wife, Mary, vowed to press charges against the killers, she too fell victim to the mob. Mary Turner's lynching was particularly brutal and involved the grisly death of her eight-month-old fetus. It led to both an entrenched local silence and a widespread national response in newspaper and magazine accounts, visual art, film, literature, and pubic memorials. Turner's story became a centerpiece of the Anti-Lynching Crusader's campaign for the 1922 Dyer Bill, which sought to make lynching a federal crime.
The Blood of Emmett Till by
Part detective story, part political history, Timothy Tyson's The Blood of Emmett Till revises the history of the Till case, not only changing the specifics that we thought we knew, but showing how the murder ignited the modern civil rights movement. Tyson uses a wide range of new sources, including the only interview ever given by Carolyn Bryant; the transcript of the murder trial, missing since 1955 and only recovered in 2005; and a recent FBI report on the case.
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by
The rule of law has vanished in America's criminal justice system. Prosecutors now decide whom to punish and how severely. Almost no one accused of a crime will ever face a jury. Inconsistent policing, rampant plea bargaining, overcrowded courtrooms, and ever more draconian sentencing have produced a gigantic prison population, with black citizens the primary defendants and victims of crime. In this passionately argued book, the leading criminal law scholar of his generation looks to history for the roots of these problems -- and for their solutions. The Collapse of American Criminal Justice takes us deep into the dramatic history of American crime -- bar fights in nineteenth-century Chicago, New Orleans bordellos, Prohibition, and decades of murderous lynching. Digging into these crimes and the strategies that attempted to control them, Stuntz reveals the costs of abandoning local democratic control.
