Legal Commons^™

Defining Authentic: The Relationship Between Native Art And Federal Indian Policy, 1879-1961, Aurora Kenworthy

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Between 1879 and 1961, non-Native perceptions of what constituted authentic Native art shifted. These changing perceptions were influenced by, and then in turn influenced, federal policy and legislation. While non-Native individuals and groups worked to improve conditions for Native communities and to protect “authentic” Native art forms, Native reformers also attempted to enact change to help Native communities and Native artists exercised control over their own art and identity.

Guest Editors' Introduction To The Special Issue, Diversity In Aquatics, Angela K. Beale-Tawfeeq, Steven N. Waller Ph.D., Austin Anderson

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

This is the introductory editorial leading off the special issue, "Diversity in Aquatics."

Suing For Spanish: Puerto Ricans, Bilingual Voting, And Legal Activism In The 1970s, Ariel Arnau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how the legal activism of a Puerto Rican group of activist-lawyers and community members contributed to the reshaping of voting law and language policy during the 1970s. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF) coordinated a series of lawsuits in Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia during the early 1970s. The decisions in these lawsuits provided the legal framework to rewrite federal voting rights law during the Voting Rights Act (VRA) reauthorization hearings in 1975. These cases resulted in vastly expanded opportunity to vote for all language minorities in the United States. These civil rights …

Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, And Power In San Francisco And Its Hinterlands, 1846-1915, Darren A. Raspa

History ETDs

“Bloody Bay: Grassroots Policeways, Community Control, and Power in San Francisco and its Hinterlands, 1846–1915” follows the history of San Francisco’s spectrum of formal and informal policing from the American takeover of California in 1846 during the U.S.–Mexico War to Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook’s nationwide law enforcement advisory team tour in 1912 and San Francisco’s debut as the Jewel of a new American Pacific world during the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. These six decades functioned as a unique period wherein a culture of popular justice and grassroots community peacekeeping were fostered. This policing environment was forged in …

Welcome To Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

South African Marriage In Policy And Practice: A Dynamic Story, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

Law forms one of the major structural contexts within which family lives play out, yet the precise dynamics connecting these two foundational institutions are still poorly understood. This article attempts to help bridge this gap by applying sociolegal concepts to empirical findings about state law's role in family, and especially in marriage, drawn from across several decades and disciplines of South Africanist scholarly research. I sketch the broad outlines of a nuanced theoretical approach for analysing the law-family relationship, which insists that the relationship entails a contingent and dynamic interplay between relatively powerful regulating institutions and relatively powerless regulated populations. …

Black White And In-Between: Race And Ethnicity In The Criminal Justice System 1885-1915, Elizabeth M. Wilhelm

Honors Theses

Events in the past year have brought racial and ethnic discrimination in the criminal justice system to the forefront of American consciousness. In reality, race has been used to create stereotypes for centuries, often supported by “scientific” and “statistical” evidence to support the idea that certain races are more likely to commit crimes than others. In my research, I trace the development of these ideas as well as the evidence used to support these racial notions primarily by drawing upon conference transcripts from two professional organizations: The National Prison Association and the National Conference of Charities and Corrections covering the …

American Indian Activism And The Rise Of Red Power, Rachael Guadagni

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

Recent historical scholarship has determined that the socio-political environment of post-World War II America provided the necessary catalyst for Native American activism which when combined with the socio-political atmosphere of the civil rights era lead to the development of the Red Power Movement. In the thirty or so years immediately following World War II America witnessed profound social and political change. Initial fear of communism lead to strict, pro-capitalist Indian legislation resulting in the termination of hundreds of tribes and the relocation of countless Indian people. From this same environment rose strong leaders, including many veterans, influenced by Cold War …

Segregation In United States Healthcare: From Reconstruction To Deluxe Jim Crow, Kerri L. Hunkele

Honors Theses and Capstones

During the time period between Reconstruction and the Deluxe Jim Crow era, African Americans were legally oppressed, which hindered their ability to live fully and equally in society with whites. This was especially true in terms of healthcare. Segregation laws were implemented to separate blacks from the rest of society in everyday life; the worst of these laws affected the ability of African Americans to gain access to medical care that was equal to whites. This inequality prevented blacks from being accepted into society and from living quality lives that stem from adequate healthcare. Although the federal and state governments …

'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.

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 …

Warren County, Kentucky - Court Records (Sc 2527), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2527. Warrant (1822) to sheriff to take custody of a free mulatto man found in Warren County; certificates (2) and appointment (1) relating to slave patrols in Warren County (1824-1825); and undated power of attorney authorizing apprehension of a fugitive slave from New Orleans, Louisiana.

‘Unkle Sommerset's’ Freedom: Liberty In England For Black Sailors, Charles R. Foy

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

With his 1772 decree in Somerset v. Steuart that slavery was ‘so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it [in England] but positive law’, Lord Mansfield altered the legal landscape regarding black rights in England. While earlier judicial decisions had implied that slaves who came to England were free, prior to the Somerset decision there was no judicial consensus on the issue. The Somerset decision did not decree that slavery was illegal in England. Yet many blacks believed it ‘emancipated’ any slave who reached the shores of England. This understanding, combined with the British military welcoming runaways into …

Pennsylvania Legislation Relating To Slavery

Adams County History

The following acts have been taken, complete or in part, from the published volumes of The Statutes At Large of Pennsylvania and Laws of Pennsylvania. These extracts are not all-inclusive, but do cover the years 1725/6-1847, from the province's first general statement of the legal standing of blacks, full-blooded and mixed, and the treatment to be afforded them, up to the state's rewritten and strengthened prohibition of the kidnapping of free blacks and the seizing of fugitive slaves. Included are not only acts showing the status and the protection of slaves, whether residents or sojourners, but also those requiring resident …

Understanding Emancipation: Lincoln's Proclamation And The Overthrow Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The most common trope that governs understanding of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation is that of progress. The variations on that trope are legion, and they include notions of Lincoln's journey toward emancipation, his growth in understanding the justice of emancipation, and his path to the Emancipation Proclamation. "Lincoln was," as Horace Greeley put it, "a growing man"; growing from a stance of moral indifference and ignorance at the time of his election in 1860 toward deep conviction about African American freedom by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation less than two years later. That was a generous sentiment, since it …

The Martinsville Seven: Virginia's Most Controversial Court Case, 1949 - 1951, Michael Dean Plemmons

History Theses & Dissertations

In January, 1949 seven black youths were arrested and charged with brutally beating and raping a white woman in Martinsville, Virginia. The judicial process lasted over two years and gained national and international attention. The defendants were ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death for their ruthless crime. The conviction came as no surprise. The evidence was overwhelming, but the verdict created controversy. Some claimed the youths were victims of Jim Crowism while others believed the punishment was just.

This study explores the events of the case and determines why Martinsville was unique given patterns of racial unrest throughout the …

Race And Capital Punishment, Michael L. Radelet

Trotter Review

Whether it be lynching or legally-imposed capital punishment, the threat or use of death as a punishment has been a powerful means of class and race intimidation throughout American history. In the nineteenth century, statutes that explicitly considered race were not uncommon; in Virginia, for example, the statutes of 150 years ago listed five capital crimes for whites and 70 for black slaves. Today, historians interested in capital punishment use records of state compensations to slave owners to learn how many slaves were executed.

A Thesis On The Constitutional History Of The American Negro From 1776 To 1875, Clothilde Labat

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, submitted to Xavier University in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1930, traces the constitutional and legal history of the American Negro from 1776 to 1875, examining the legislative record underlying the eventual adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. Labat argues that this body of law developed gradually from colonial-era statutes and custom rather than from any founding constitutional mandate, and that the Federal Constitution itself contained no explicit provision for slavery.

The thesis surveys legislation across the pre-constitutional, pre-Civil War, Civil War, and post-Civil War eras, beginning with colonial statutes …

Agreement At Fort Berthold, 1866 And Addenda., Charles J. Kappler, Newton Edmunds, Samuel R. Curtis, Orrin Guernsey, Henry W. Reed

US Government Documents Related to Indigenous Nations

This 1904 reprint of the unratified treaty with the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa, was reprinted as the Agreement at Fort Berthold, 1866, in vol. II of Charles Kappler’s Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. Originally signed on July 27, 1866, at Fort Berthold, Dakota Territory, this treaty and its Addenda were a set of agreements between the US government and representatives of the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa Nations. In this document, the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa agreed to cede a portion of their land on the east bank of the Missouri River and granted a right-of-way for roads through their …

Treaty Of Fort Laramie, 1868 (Kappler), Charles J. Kappler, Nathaniel G. Taylor, William T. Sherman, William S. Harney, John B. Sanborn, Samuel F. Tappen, Christopher C. Augur, Alfred H. Terry, John B. Henderson, Andrew Johnson

US Government Documents Related to Indigenous Nations

This 1904 reprint of the Sioux Treaty of 1868, also known as the Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868, was transcribed and published in vol. II of Charles Kappler’s Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. This treaty, between the United States government and the Sioux and Arapaho Nations, established the Great Sioux Reservation, promised the Sioux would own the Black Hills in perpetuity, and set aside the country north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains as unceded Indian territory. Furthermore, the U.S. government pledged to close the Bozeman Trail forts and provide …

Receipt To C. Sareon For Loss Of His Slave, Hooker, To Employment In The Confederate Army, South Carolina. Columbia, February, 1864., South Carolina

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Instrument indicating Sareon received $1250 from S.C. for having Hooker, his slave, build military fortifications in the state.

Manuscript, Partly Printed Document Authorizing The Seizure Of 2 Slaves, 3 Horses, 80 Head Of Cattle, And Sixty Head Of Hogs, In Payment Of A Debt Owed By William Garborough And Hugh Rusk To William A. Austin, Jackson County, Florida, Dated January 22, 1858., William A. Austin

Documents Related to Slavery

State of Florida Know all men by these presents that Jackson County We William Garbrough and Hugh Rusk bound unto William A Austin by the sum of two hundred dollars and ... cents for the payment whereof well and truly to be made. we bind, ourselves. our heirs. executors and administrators. jointly and severally. firmly by these presents. signed and sealed this twenty second day of January A.D.1858 THE CONDITION OF .THE ABOVE OBLIGATION IS SUCH; that whereas James Griffin. Sheriff of Jackson County. by virtue of an execution in favor of the said William A. Austin against the said …

Liquor License, Barnwell District, South Carolina, August 21, 1841., Barnwell District, South Carolina

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

In which the licensee, William Robertson Jr., swears to not "sell give exchange barter" liquor to any enslaved persons. Signed by C.A. Scott.

Fragment Of A Deed Distributing 202.5 Acres Of Land "Obtained From The Creek Nation Of Indians" In Baldwin County, Georgia To James Tarrentine 1802., John Milledge

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Top half of a land grant to James Tarrentine for 202.5 acres in the first district of Baldwin County, Georgia. Date is approximate, based on treaty date noted in document.

Letter From Josiah Masters To John Reade About An Enslaved Man Named Dick Whom (Masters) Wishes To Sell. New York, 1796., Josiah Masters

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Masters writes to Reade that Dick "has been somewhat uneasy with me, the first cause [was] my separating his wench from him."

"The lowest price is one hundred pounds."

Addressed to Reade in Poughkeepsie, NY.