Law Commons^™

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

Black Women's Suffrage, The Nineteenth Amendment, And The Duality Of A Movement, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

America is at an unprecedented time with self-determination for Black women, and this phase of the movement is reverberating throughout this nation and around the world. There is no confusion for those who identify as Black women that this movement is perpetual, dating back to the enslavement of Black people in America by act and by law. One need only look to the intersecting crises of 2020 to discern the reality of Black women’s—and by extension the Black community and by further extension individuals and groups marginalized, subordinated, and oppressed by white patriarchy—perpetual struggle for civil and human rights.

To …