Description
Book SynopsisViolence has marked relations between blacks and whites in America for nearly four hundred years. In The Lineaments of Wrath, James W. Clarke draws upon behavioral science theory and primary historical evidence to examine and explain its causes and enduring consequences.
Beginning with slavery and concluding with the present, Clarke describes how the combined effects of state-sanctioned mob violence and the discriminatory administration of race-blind criminal and contract labor laws terrorized and immobilized the black population in the post-emancipation South. In this fashion an agricultural system, based on debt peonage and convict labor, quickly replaced slavery and remained the back-bone of the region's economy well into the twentieth century.
Quoting the actual words of victims and witnessesâfrom former slaves to gangsta rappersâClarke documents the erosion of black confidence in American criminal justice. In so doing, he also traces the evolution, across m
Trade Review
"In this comprehensive, no-holds-barred study Clarke...reviews the history of race relations from slavery and Emancipation, the immediate post-Civil War period of Reconstruction to 'Restoration' and the emergence of Jim Crow segregation (what white southerners once called 'Redemption') to the ill-fated move to the dark ghettoes of the 'Promised Land,' the urban north." - Peter Rose, Choice; "Clarke combines statistical evidence and a careful appralsal of secondary sources with a sometimes grisly recounting of illustrative incidents to produce an impressive analysis of the political economy of four centuries of both random and systematic race-based violence and oppression." - Gary Klass, Perspectives on Political Science"
Table of Contents
1. Violence Begets Violence Part I: Slavery 2. The Lineaments of Wrath 3. Scarred in the Flame of Withering Injustice Part II: Reconstruction 4. No More Auction Block 5. The Paradox of Emancipation 6. The Failure of Reform 7. KKK: The Assault on Black Families Part III: The Restoration 8. Convict Labor 9. A Lawless Loyalty to Color 10. The Scourge of Lynching 11. Segregation, Disfranchisement, and Legal Lynchings 12. The Richest Soil, the Poorest People Part IV: The Urban Transformation 13. The Promised Land 14. Black-on-Black Homicide, 1900-1939 15. Dark Ghettos 16. Killing Fumes Part V: Consequences 17. Vanishing Families 18. Urban Tribal Societies 19. Conclusions
