Description
Book SynopsisTells the story of how, in
Hall v. Decuir, the post-Civil War US Supreme Court took its first step toward perpetuating the subjugation of the non-White population of the United States by actively preventing a Southern state from prohibiting segregation on a riverboat in the coasting trade on the Mississippi River.
Trade ReviewRacism in the United States dismantled the Civil War's legal achievements and built the world of continuing and expanding racialized segregation, deprivations, and indignities-but how did this come to pass? It took the particularly effective combination of White resentment, judicial activism, legal abstractions, and political backlash to strip free people of color of rights, wealth, and status as shown in this detailed yet vivid and accessible account by Jack Beermann. Thanks to this book, the little-remembered Supreme Court rejection of state antidiscrimination laws and the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of Josephine Decuir and her lawyers take their rightful place in the crucial reckoning with vigorous federal destruction of equal treatment in the United States. Read this book to understand how 'technicalities' of inheritance law practice, the 'dormant Commerce Clause,' and Southern transportation policies mixed with White status desires to block equal treatment laws and create the 'separate but equal' regime." - Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor and former dean of Harvard Law School and author of
In Brown'
s Wake: Legacies of America's Constitutional Landmark"It's about time the much-neglected US Supreme Court ruling
Hall v. Decuir (1878) received serious book-length attention, for this 'long-forgotten' decision is more than an ironic milestone on the road to
Plessy. In Jack Beermann's telling, it is no less a poignant turning point in the decisive marginalization of nineteenth-century Louisiana's mixed-race community. We owe him a huge debt for wresting this maddeningly tragic story from history's hidden shadows." - Lawrence N. Powell, professor emeritus of history, Tulane University, and author of
The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans
