Category: Law

  • Plessy and Ferguson unveil plaque today marking their ancestors’ actions New Orleans Times-Picayune 2009-02-11 Katy Reckdahl Today, Plessy versus Ferguson becomes Plessy and Ferguson, when descendants of opposing parties in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court segregation case stand together to unveil a plaque at the former site of the Press Street Railroad Yards. Standing behind…

  • Hidden in plain sight: defying juridical racialization in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Volume 1, Issue 4 (2004) Pages 313-334 DOI: 10.1080/1479142042000270458 Nadine Ehlers, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies Georgetown University This article examines the intersectionality of law and race to argue that law, in its broadest understanding, has played a…

  • Nadine Ehlers examines the constructions of blackness and whiteness cultivated in the U.S. imaginary and asks, how do individuals become racial subjects?

  • From Mariage à la Mode to Weddings at Town Hall: Marriage, Colonialism, and Mixed-Race Society in Nineteenth-Century Senegal The International Journal of African Historical Studies Volume 38, Number 1 (2005) pages 27-48 Hilary Jones, Assistant Professor of African History University of Maryland The institution of marriage served as the basis for the formation of mixed-race…

  • The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White [Discussion] Lillian Goldman Law Library Yale University 2011-03-07 Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Moderator: Claire Priest, Professor of Law Yale University The Lillian Goldman Law Library together with the Yale Law School Legal History Forum and the Yale…

  • Black or White? The New York Times 2011-05-14 Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Daniel J. Sharfstein is the author of “The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White.” In February 1861, just weeks after Louisiana seceded from the Union, Randall Lee Gibson enlisted as a private…

  • The campaign for racial purity and the erosion of paternalism in Virginia, 1922-1930: “nominally white, biologically mixed, and legally Negro”. The Journal of Southern History Volume 68, Number 1 (February 2002) pages 65-106 J. Douglas Smith In September 1922 John Powell, a Richmond native and world-renowned pianist and composer, and Earnest Sevier Cox, a self-proclaimed…

  • Mildred Loving The Economist 2008-05-15 Mildred Loving, law-changer, died on May 2nd, aged 68 The loved each other. That must have been why they decided to get their marriage certificate framed and to hang it up in the bedroom of their house. There was little else in the bedroom, save the bed. Certainly nothing worth…

  • Loving Indian Style: Maintaining Racial Caste and Tribal Sovereignty Through Sexual Assimilation Wisconsin Law Review Volume 2007, Number 2 (2007-01-12) pages 410-461 Carla D. Pratt, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Educational Equity; Nancy J. LaMont Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law Pennsylvania State University I. Introduction When the United States Supreme Court struck down…

  • Negro History, Part X: Miscegenation in America Ebony Magazine October 1962 pages 94-104 (Digitized by Google) Lerone Bennett, Jr., Executive Editor The material in this chapter on miscegenation during the slavery period is based largely on James Hugo Johnston’s doctorial dissertation at the University of Chicago, Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South,…