Law

New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders...

The definitive reckoning with Affirmative Action, one of America's most explosively contentious and divisive issues--from "one of our most important and perceptive writers on race and the law."--The Washington Post "A clear-eyed take on America's battle...

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...

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law?In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow...

"A story for the ages." --New York Times The defense lawyer for Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the Selma marchers and other civil rights heroes reveals the true story of the historic trial that made Dr. King a national hero. Fred D. Gray was one of...

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city ganglife, Mark Bowden takes readers inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depthportrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigationthat landed eight gang members in prisonSandtown is...

Against the Carceral Archive is a meditation upon what author Damien M. Sojoyner calls the "carceral archival project," offering a distillation of critical, theoretical, and activist work of prison abolitionists over the past three decades. Working from...

The civil rights movement in South Carolina has an epic and tumultuous history, beginning with the very first statewide meeting of the NAACP in 1939.With stories of sit-ins, movements and the integration of state universities, this is the first...

How the Supreme Court's decision to treat unreasonable policing as reasonable under the Fourth Amendment has shortened the distance between life and death for Black peopleThe summer of 2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented, watershed moment in the...

Caliph Washington didn't pull the trigger but, as Officer James Cowboy Clark lay dying, he had no choice but to turn on his heel and run. The year was 1957; Cowboy Clark was white, Caliph Washington was black, and this was the Jim Crow South.As He Calls...