Race And The Law In South Carolina

Race and the Law in South Carolina carefully reconstructs the social history behind six legal disputes heard in the South Carolina courts between the 1840s and the 1940s. The book uses these case studies to probe the complex relationship between race and the law in the American South during a century that included slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. Throughout most of the period covered in the book, the South Carolina legal system obsessively drew racial lines, always to the detriment of nonwhite people. Occasionally, however, the legal system also provided a public forum--perhaps the region's best--within which racism could openly be challenged. The book emphasizes how dramatically the degree of legal oppressiveness experienced by Black South Carolinians varied during the century under study, based largely on the degree of Black access to political and legal power. During the era of slavery, both enslaved and nominally "free" Black South Carolinians suffered extreme legal disenfranchisement. They had no political voice and precious little access to legal redress. They could not vote, serve in public office, sit on juries, or testify in court against whites. There were no Black lawyers. Black South Carolinians had essentially no claims-making ability, resulting, unsurprisingly, in a deeply oppressive, thoroughly racialized system. Most of these antebellum legal disenfranchisements were overturned during the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction. In the wake of abolition, Reconstruction-era reformers in South Carolina erased one racial distinction after another from state law. For a time, Black men voted and Black jurors sat in rough proportion to their share of the state's population. The state's first Black lawyers and officeholders appeared. Among them was an attorney from Pennsylvania named Jonathan Jasper Wright, who ascended to the South Carolina Supreme Court in 1870, becoming the nation's first Black appellate justice. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, an explicitly white supremacist movement had rolled back many of the egalitarian gains of the Reconstruction era and reimposed a legalized racial hierarchy in South Carolina. The book explores three prominent features of the resulting Jim Crow system (segregated schools, racially skewed juries, and lynching) and documents the commitment of both elite and non-elite whites to using legal and quasi-legal tools to establish hierarchical racial distinctions. It also shows how Black lawyers and others used the law to combat some of Jim Crow's worst excesses. In this sense the book demonstrates the persistence of many Reconstruction-era reforms, including emancipation, Black education, the legal language of equal protection, Black lawyers, and Black access to the courts.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Maintaining the easily readable style and tightly organized format of the first and second editions, the third edition of Race Law provides an in-depth examination of the issue of race in the American Legal process from the formation of the United States Constitution in 1787 to the present. In this book, Higginbotham combines a unique blend of moderately edited original source materials and scholarly analysis including historical background information, legislation, state and federal court decisions, commentary, biographical information, and questions. Fully revised and updated, the third edition offers important new material on race classification, reconstruction, reparations, citizenship, criminal justice, employment discrimination, affirmative action, and Supreme Court appointments. Higginbotham also explores the values of the individuals in power and probes how these values affected their choice of options. Race Law is divided into six parts: Analysis and Framework; Slavery; Reconstruction, Citizenship, and Sovereignty; Segregation; Attempted Eradication of Inequality; and Supreme Court Confirmation Controversies. While the material is presented primarily in chronological order, a few cases are strategically placed for pedagogical reasons consistent with the book's focus on values. This casebook is comprehensive in its coverage both as to time period (1787 to the present) and as to subject-matter (slavery, reconstruction, segregation, and attempted eradication as applied to African Americans, American Indians, Latinos/as, and Asian Americans). It includes all of the important cases and statutes pertaining to those subjects and groups. Although containing both cases and statutes, Race Law is an extremely readable casebook. Students love it because it reads like a novel rather than forty separate and distinct cases. This easily readable style is achieved by proceeding chronologically, by careful editing of each case, and by using introductions and conclusions for each case that allow for easy transitions between cases, and between cases and chapters. Race Law contains biographical information on individuals that played significant roles in the cases. Such information adds an element of reality to the theories being discussed. Race Law contains all of the fascinating stories that provide historical background to the cases and statutes. It is the only casebook that contains both cases and stories in one. Designed for those with limited exposure to the history of American race relations law, Race Law provides a unique introductory learning opportunity for law students, graduate students, and upper-division college students. The accompanying Teacher's Manual provides a detailed approach for each class session beginning with an introduction and an opening question, continuing with an in-depth examination of each assigned case, and concluding with a closing question and summary. An outline is provided for each class session, answers are provided for all suggested questions, and each case analysis includes facts, issue, holding, and rationale.

Providing a well-rounded presentation of the constitution and evolution of civil rights in the United States, this book will be useful for students and academics with an interest in civil rights, race and the law. Abraham L Davis and Barbara Luck Graham's purpose is: to give an overview of the Supreme Court and its rulings with regard to issues of equality and civil rights; to bring law, political science and history into the discussion of civil rights and the Supreme Court; to incorporate the politically disadvantaged and the human component into the discussion; to stimulate discussion among students; and to provide a text that cultivates competence in reading actual Supreme Court cases.

Judge Higginbotham chronicles in unrelenting detail the role of the law in the enslavement and subjugation of black Americans during the colonial period. It is a moving book that should be read by all Americans who believe in justice and dignity for all.

A study of how South Carolina's federal district courts were central to achieving and solidifying gains during the civil rights movement As the first comprehensive study of one state's federal district courts during the long civil rights movement, The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship. African American plaintiffs and lawyers from South Carolina, with the support of Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, brought and argued civil rights lawsuits in South Carolina's federal courts attempting to secure the vote, raise teacher salaries, and to equalize and then desegregate schools, parks, and public life. In response, white citizens, state politicians, and local officials, hired their own lawyers who countered these arguments by crafting new legal theories in an attempt to defend state practices and thwart African American aspirations of equality and to preserve white supremacy. The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of federal courts in the civil rights movement by demonstrating that both before and after Brown v. Board of Education, the federal district courts were centrally important to achieving and solidifying civil rights gains. It relies on the entire legal record of actions in the federal district courts of South Carolina from 1940 to 1970 to make the case. It argues that rather than relying on litigation during the pre-Brown era and direct action in the post-Brown era, African Americans instead used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era. But the process was far from linear and the courts were not always a progressive force. The battles were long, the victories won were often imperfect, and many of the fights remain. Author Stephen H. Lowe offers a chronicle of this enduring struggle.

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