Race and the law in South Carolina : from slavery to Jim Crow / John William Wertheimer.

This first title in the "Law, Literature & Culture" series uses six legal disputes from the South Carolina courts to illuminate the complex legal history of race in the U.S. South from slavery through Jim Crow. The first two cases--one criminal, one civil--both illuminate the extreme o...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full Text (via JSTOR)
Main Author: Wertheimer, John, 1963- (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Amherst, Massachusetts : Amherst College Press, [2023]
Series:Law, Literature & Culture ; 1.
Subjects:
Description
Summary:This first title in the "Law, Literature & Culture" series uses six legal disputes from the South Carolina courts to illuminate the complex legal history of race in the U.S. South from slavery through Jim Crow. The first two cases--one criminal, one civil--both illuminate the extreme oppressiveness of slavery. The third explores labor relations between newly emancipated Black agricultural workers and white landowners during Reconstruction. The remaining cases investigate three prominent features of the Jim Crow system: segregated schools, racially biased juries, and lynching, respectively. Throughout the century under consideration, South Carolina's legal system obsessively drew racial lines, always to the detriment of non-white people, but it occasionally provided a public forum within which racial oppression could 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.
Physical Description:1 online resource (xiii, 331 pages)
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781943208333
1943208336