Law Commons^™

Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …

A Half Century Later, We Need The Voting Rights Act More Than Ever, Jill Ogline Titus

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

Two years ago, the Supreme Court determined that voter discrimination is a thing of the past. The Court's decision to gut the 1965 Voting Rights Act ensures that this summer's 50^thanniversary commemoration is an ironic one.

We needed the legislation in 1965, the Court argued in its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down the formula that made the act enforceable, but we don't anymore. [excerpt]

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. …

Race And Political Empowerment: The Crisis Of Black Leadership, William E. Nelson Jr.

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

W.E.B. Du Bois demonstrated poignant insight into the character of American society when he predicted in 1901 that the fundamental problem of the 20th Century would be the problem of the color line. Du Bois was writing in the aftermath of the first reconstruction that saw the institutionalization of Jim Crow and white dominance across the South. This period was symbolized by the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896. It was also marked by the capitulation of white Republican custodians of Reconstruction to the racist demands of southern politics, including the massive ejection of Black politicians from public office, …