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Race And Place: Geographic And Transcendent Community In The Post-"Shaw" Era, Lisa A. Kelly

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the Preface to Colored People, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., describes and explains for his daughter, Liza, communities characterized by race. Throughout his memoir, Professor Gates re- creates communities local and communities transcendent. In one passage, he insists that he is "from and of a time and place-Piedmont, West Virginia... slathered along the ridge of 'Old Baldie' mountain like butter on the jagged side of a Parker House roll." The geography of place, even within the small town of Piedmont, is central. Italian neighborhoods in the west, Irish neighborhoods up on "Arch Hill," wealthy white neighborhoods defined by the block …