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Articles 1 - 26 of 26
Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
'Dred Scott V. Sandford' Analysis, Sarah E. Roessler
'Dred Scott V. Sandford' Analysis, Sarah E. Roessler
Student Publications
The Scott v. Sandford decision will forever be known as a dark moment in America's history. The Supreme Court chose to rule on a controversial issue, and they made the wrong decision. Scott v. Sandford is an example of what can happen when the Court chooses to side with personal opinion instead of what is right.
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Love In Action: Noting Similarities Between Lynching Then & Anti-Lgbt Violence Now, Koritha Mitchell
Koritha Mitchell
The more I learn about the violence currently plaguing LGBT communities, the more it reminds me of the brutal practice of lynching, which has been the focus my research for the past 15 years. Ultimately, both forms of violence are designed to deny targeted groups recognition as citizens. Relying on my expertise regarding racial violence as well as the data on anti-LGBT attacks collected by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), this essay notes similarities between lynching at the last turn of the century and anti-LGBT violence today. The piece identifies five parallels: 1) the mundane quality of the …
Introduction: Lynching, Incarceration’S Cousin: From Till To Trayvon, Barbara Lewis
Introduction: Lynching, Incarceration’S Cousin: From Till To Trayvon, Barbara Lewis
Trotter Review
The wholesale criminalizing of the black male has been much in the news, put there by the Trayvon Martin case and the Florida verdict. (Incidentally, even though we don’t often think of it, Florida was where the first African slaves were installed in America, back in the 1500s in the city of St. Augustine.) As an academic, which, loosely translated means that I often bury my head between the covers of a book trying to figure out one thing or another, I am thought of as someone who is cautious and circumspect in what I think and write, but I …
Studies On Religion And Recidivism: Focus On Roxbury, Dorchester, And Mattapan, George Walters-Sleyon
Studies On Religion And Recidivism: Focus On Roxbury, Dorchester, And Mattapan, George Walters-Sleyon
Trotter Review
This research article raises the question of whether religion can be considered a viable partner in the reduction of the high rate of recidivism associated with the increasing mass incarceration in the United States. Can sustainable transformation in the life of a prisoner or former prisoner as a result of religious conversion be subjected to evidenced-based practices to derive impartial conclusions about the value of religion in their lives? With a particular focus on three neighborhoods of Boston—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan—this study examines the relevance of religion and faith-based organizations in lowering the high rate of recidivism associated with incarceration …
The Personal And Family Challenges Of Reentry: Interview With Helen Credle, Kenneth J. Cooper
The Personal And Family Challenges Of Reentry: Interview With Helen Credle, Kenneth J. Cooper
Trotter Review
For 40 years, Helen Credle has worked with prison inmates and exoffenders in Massachusetts, from inside or outside the state corrections system. The Boston native, who grew up in Roxbury, did not set out to become an advocate for prisoners and their families. Oddly, it was music that first took her inside prison walls and into that role. As director of community services for the New England Conservatory of Music, Credle organized concerts by bluesman B.B. King and balladeer Bobby Womack in state prisons. Her involvement grew deeper when the conservatory’s administrators and faculty members decided to teach inmates to …
Gray Matters Behind Bars, Howard Manly
Gray Matters Behind Bars, Howard Manly
Trotter Review
Forty years ago, the nation got tough on crime. It is now paying the price as the skyrocketing cost of incarcerating aging inmates is haunting state and federal prison budgets.
Life After Prison: A Different Kind Of Sentence?, A Forum At The Boston Center For The Arts, Andrea J. Cabral, Daniel Cordon, Lyn Levy, Gary Little, Janet Rodriguez
Life After Prison: A Different Kind Of Sentence?, A Forum At The Boston Center For The Arts, Andrea J. Cabral, Daniel Cordon, Lyn Levy, Gary Little, Janet Rodriguez
Trotter Review
In September 2012, the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) hosted a forum on life after prison as part of its series, Dialogue: Social Issues Examined Through the Playwright’s Pen. The forum coincided with performances at the Boston Center for the Arts of The MotherF**ker with the Hat, a play by Stephen Andy Guirgis about prisoner reentry.
Andrea J. Cabral, then sheriff of Suffolk County and secretary of public safety in Massachusetts, moderated the forum in BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion, the same theater where SpeakEasy Stage Company was putting on the play. The four panelists work for nonprofit organizations primarily …
Inside/Outside: A Model For Social Support And Rehabilitation Of Young Black Men, Harold Adams, Castellano Turner
Inside/Outside: A Model For Social Support And Rehabilitation Of Young Black Men, Harold Adams, Castellano Turner
Trotter Review
This paper first identifies some of the most important problems facing incarcerated young black males. Next, we present an historical analysis that pinpoints the War on Drugs as the primary origin of mass incarceration of that group. Then we describe the major consequences for prisoners as well as collateral problems for their families, friends, and communities. We then outline the types of programs created to address these problems. We summarize research that shows the key to solving high recidivism rates is social support during incarceration and after release. We describe in particular a Boston-based organization, the Committee of Friends and …
Stop And Frisk: From Slave-Catchers To Nypd, A Legal Commentary, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
Stop And Frisk: From Slave-Catchers To Nypd, A Legal Commentary, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
Trotter Review
Today’s “stop and frisk” practices stem from centuries of legal control of Africans in America. Colonial laws were drafted specifically to control Africans, enslaved and free. Slave catchers culled the woods in search of those Africans who dared escape. After slavery ended, “Black Codes” or criminal laws were enacted to ensnare African Americans, including the sinister convict-lease system that existed well into the twentieth century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to extend police authority to stop and frisk during the Civil Rights Movement.
Police abuse of stop and frisk has led to tens of millions of people detained and searched …
What Are The Key Competencies, Qualities, And Attributes Of The African American Municipal Police Chief?, Patrick Oliver
What Are The Key Competencies, Qualities, And Attributes Of The African American Municipal Police Chief?, Patrick Oliver
Faculty Dissertations
The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and understand the dimensions of leadership of those African Americans, who are effective as the chief executive officer (CEO) of a municipal law enforcement agency, and thereby to educate and inform both those aspiring to be police chiefs and those presently serving as police chiefs, particularly African Americans. Four content areas were examined to gain a better understanding of the research question: (1) Police executive leadership literature; (2) African American leadership; (3) The trait theory of leadership; (4) emotional intelligence. Study participants were all African American police chiefs with the expertise and …
Afro-Environmentalism: Black Stewardship In The New Millennium, Shelby Renee Burks Ward
Afro-Environmentalism: Black Stewardship In The New Millennium, Shelby Renee Burks Ward
Black Issues Conference
In the 21st century, societies face serious environmental problems. Black leadership in the environmental arena—stewardship—is vital for successful decision-making that respects all life on the planet, human health, and sustainable economy. Afro-environmentalism will explore how the legacy of the civil rights movement inspires environmental activism, current environmental problems, and how people of African descent are needed to effectively address those problems.
As African-Americans, the civil rights leaders of yesterday gave us an incredible legacy. Men and women fought against oppression and gave their lives for equal treatment, justice, and freedom. Today, environmental problems also include matters of injustice, untruth, and …
''Get Your Asphalt Off My Ancestors!'': Reclaiming Richmond's African Burial Ground, Mai-Linh Hong
''Get Your Asphalt Off My Ancestors!'': Reclaiming Richmond's African Burial Ground, Mai-Linh Hong
Faculty Journal Articles
By treating spatial conflict as one way communities wrestle with the memory and legacy of slavery, this article unites critical landscape analysis, a tool of legal geography, with legal and cultural analysis and recent scholarship on African American reparations. A slave cemetery lay beneath a parking lot in Shockoe Bottom, a neighborhood of downtown Richmond that was once a major slave-trading hub. In recent years, controversy arose over the site’s use, generating racially charged local debate and two failed lawsuits seeking to preserve the site. This article examines the significance of the African Burial Ground controversy by analyzing its symbolic, …
Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein
Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein
Honors Projects
This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …
A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Male Law Enforcement Officers' Perspectives Of Racial Profiling And Their Law Enforcement Career Exploration And Commitment, Gregory A. Salters
A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Male Law Enforcement Officers' Perspectives Of Racial Profiling And Their Law Enforcement Career Exploration And Commitment, Gregory A. Salters
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This phenomenological study explored Black male law enforcement officers’ perspectives of how racial profiling shaped their decisions to explore and commit to a law enforcement career. Criterion and snow ball sampling was used to obtain the 17 participants for this study. Super’s (1990) archway model was used as the theoretical framework. The archway model “is designed to bring out the segmented but unified and developmental nature of career development, to highlight the segments, and to make their origin clear” (Super, 1990, p. 201).
Interview data were analyzed using inductive, deductive, and comparative analyses. Three themes emerged from the inductive analysis …
The Power To Destroy: Discriminatory Property Assessments And The Struggle For Tax Justice, Andrew W. Kahrl
The Power To Destroy: Discriminatory Property Assessments And The Struggle For Tax Justice, Andrew W. Kahrl
Studio for Law and Culture
High assessments on African American-owned land became a common, if often invisible, feature of Jim Crow governance. Discriminatory modes of property taxation served as a weapon of social control, an instrument of land speculation and redevelopment, and a vehicle for the unequal distribution of public services. This essay traces the strange career of the property tax from the period of Reconstruction to the age of Jim Crow, situating racial differentials in the assessment and collection of ad valorem taxes within the broader framework of white supremacist governance, and provides a case study of property tax discrimination in civil rights-era Mississippi. …
Black Women's Post-Slavery Silence Syndrome: A Twenty-First Century Remnant Of Slavery, Jim Crow, And Systemic Racism--Who Will Tell Her Stories?, Patricia A. Broussard
Black Women's Post-Slavery Silence Syndrome: A Twenty-First Century Remnant Of Slavery, Jim Crow, And Systemic Racism--Who Will Tell Her Stories?, Patricia A. Broussard
Journal Publications
One hot summer's day in the late 1950s, a young mother put her three young children down for a nap. She also bathed and prepared four of her sister's children for naptime. This young woman had volunteered to care for her nephew and nieces while their mother, her younger sister, was in the hospital delivering her fifth child. A short while after putting all of the children in their beds, the children's father, her brother-in-law, knocked on the door. The young woman assumed that he had come over to see his children and to bring them news of their mother …
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Akron Law Faculty Publications
People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Wilson R. Huhn
People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …
Legal Punishment As Civil Ritual: Making Cultural Sense Of Harsh Punishment, Spearit
Legal Punishment As Civil Ritual: Making Cultural Sense Of Harsh Punishment, Spearit
Articles
This work examines mass incarceration through a ritual studies perspective, paying explicit attention to the religious underpinnings. Conventional analyses of criminal punishment focus on the purpose of punishment in relation to legal or moral norms, or attempt to provide a general theory of punishment. The goals of this work are different, and instead try to understand the cultural aspects of punishment that have helped make the United States a global leader in imprisonment and execution. It links the boom in incarceration to social ruptures of the 1950s and 1960s and posits the United States’ world leader status as having more …
A Snitch In Time: An Historical Sketch Of Black Informing During Slavery, Andrea L. Dennis
A Snitch In Time: An Historical Sketch Of Black Informing During Slavery, Andrea L. Dennis
Scholarly Works
This article sketches the socio-legal creation, use, and regulation of informants in the Black community during slavery and the Black community’s response at that time. Despite potentially creating benefits such as crime control and sentence reduction, some Blacks today are convinced that cooperation with government investigations and prosecutions should be avoided. One factor contributing to this perspective is America’s reliance on Black informants to police and socially control Blacks during slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Wars on Drugs, Crime and Gangs. Notwithstanding this historical justification for non-cooperation, only a few informant law and policy scholars have examined closely …
Pauli Murray And The Twentieth-Century Quest For Legal And Social Equality, Serena Mayeri
Pauli Murray And The Twentieth-Century Quest For Legal And Social Equality, Serena Mayeri
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Privacy Law: Positive Theory And Normative Practice, Anita L. Allen
Privacy Law: Positive Theory And Normative Practice, Anita L. Allen
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Integration Reclaimed: A Review Of Gary Peller's Critical Race Consciousness, Michelle Adams
Integration Reclaimed: A Review Of Gary Peller's Critical Race Consciousness, Michelle Adams
Articles
Integration occupies a contested and often paradoxical place in legal and public policy scholarship and the American imagination. Today, more Americans are committed to integration than ever before. Yet this attachment to integration is hardly robust. There is a widespread perception that integration has failed. A vanishingly small percentage of social and economic resources are spent on integration. At the same time, some progressives and those who would otherwise consider themselves on the "left" criticize integration as insufficiently attentive to economic equality and dismissive of black identity and culture. Scholars from across the political spectrum have sought to explain this …
Black Male Exceptionalism? The Problems And Potential Of Black Male-Focused Interventions, Paul D. Butler
Black Male Exceptionalism? The Problems And Potential Of Black Male-Focused Interventions, Paul D. Butler
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
“Black male exceptionalism” is the premise that African American men fare more poorly than any other group in the United States. The discourse of Black male exceptionalism presents African American men as an “endangered species.” Some government agencies, foundations, and activists have responded by creating “Black male achievement” programs. There are almost no corresponding “Black female achievement” programs. Yet empirical data does not support the claim that Black males are burdened more than Black females. Without attention to intersectionality, Black male achievement programs risk obscuring Black females and advancing patriarchal values. Black male achievement programs also risk reinforcing stereotypes that …
Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo
Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo
Nick J. Sciullo
To discuss spirit injury, it is at first necessary to articulate a space in the theoretical diaspora to conceptualize spirit injury as a concept deeply tied to the historical tradition of several theoretical frameworks. “Spirit injury” is a phrase popularized by critical race feminist Adrien Katherine Wing. It is a term utilized in critical race feminism (CRF) that brings together insights from critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT). Wing’s training is as a lawyer and legal scholar, not as a communication scholar, yet her work may help communication scholars more keenly theorize harm and violence. Her scholarship …
Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo
Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo
Nick J. Sciullo
Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …