An examination of the laws of each state regarding civil rights, segregation, interracial marriage and other issues.

An "admirable, courageous, and meticulously fair and honest book” (New York Times Book Review) in which “one of our most important and perceptive writers on race" (The Washington Post) takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. "This book should be a standard for all law students."—Boston Globe In this groundbreaking, powerfully reasoned, lucid work that is certain to provoke controversy, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. Kennedy uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, probing allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments, but he also engages the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. He analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair, and examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another.

This second edition of Gloria Browne-Marshall’s seminal work , tracing the history of racial discrimination in American law from colonial times to the present, is now available with major revisions. Throughout, she advocates for freedom and equality at the center, moving from their struggle for physical freedom in the slavery era to more recent battles for equal rights and economic equality. From the colonial period to the present, this book examines education, property ownership, voting rights, criminal justice, and the military as well as internationalism and civil liberties by analyzing the key court cases that established America’s racial system and demonstrating the impact of these court cases on American society. This edition also includes more on Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos. Race, Law, and American Society is highly accessible and thorough in its depiction of the role race has played, with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, in shaping virtually every major American social institution.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A collection of provocative essays exploring the key social justice issues of our time—from George Floyd to antiracism to inequality and the Supreme Court. Kennedy is "among the most incisive American commentators on race" (The New York Times). Informed by sharpness of observation and often courting controversy, deep fellow feeling, decency, and wit, Say It Loud! includes: The George Floyd Moment: Promise and Peril • Isabel Wilkerson, the Election of 2020, and Racial Caste • The Princeton Ultimatum: Anti­racism Gone Awry • The Constitutional Roots of “Birtherism” • Inequality and the Supreme Court • “Nigger”: The Strange Career Contin­ues • Frederick Douglass: Everyone’s Hero • Remembering Thurgood Marshall • Why Clar­ence Thomas Ought to Be Ostracized • The Politics of Black Respectability • Policing Ra­cial Solidarity In each essay, Kennedy is mindful of com­plexity, ambivalence, and paradox, and he is always stirring and enlightening. Say It Loud! is a wide-ranging summa of Randall Kennedy’s thought on the realities and imaginaries of race in America.

Softbound - New, softbound print book.

When it comes to race and racial issues these are strange times for all Americans. More than forty years after Brown v. Board of Education put an end to segregation of the races by law, current debates about affirmative action, multiculturalism, and racial hate speech reveal persistent uncertainty about the place and meaning of race in American culture and the role of law in guaranteeing racial equality. Moreover, all sides in those debates claim to be the true heirs to Brown, even as they disagree vehemently about its meaning. Race, Law and Culture takes the continuing controversy about race in law and culture as an invitation to revisit Brown, using this case as a lens through which to view that controversy and the issues involved in it. The essays collected here describe the contested legacy of Brown as well as the way it is implicated in America's persistent uncertainties about race. In so doing they confront crucial questions about race, law and culture in contemporary America: What were the legal and cultural visions contained in Brown? How have those visions been articulated in other legal struggles? Why does the subject of race continue to haunt the American imagination? With original essays from contributors such as David Garrow, Lawrence Friedman, and Hazel Carby, this work will be an important perspective from which to view questions of race in modern America.

Race, Law and Society draws together some of the very best writing on race and racism from the law and society tradition, yet it is not intended to merely reprint the greatest hits of the past. Instead, from its introduction to its selection of articles, this anthology is designed as a 'how-to manual', a guide for scholars and students seeking templates for their own work in this important but also tricky area. Race, Law and Society pulls together leading exemplars of the sorts of social science scholarship on race, society and law that will be essential to racial progress as the world begins to travel the twenty-first century.

"Casebook on race law with emphasis on American history"--