Showing results for "The Courts" in Sociology

Tineka Smith always knew that growing up Black in America meant certain restrictions. Don’t talk back to white people, expect to be stopped by the police, always be on your guard. So, when she moved to the UK - and fell in love with Alex Court, a white man - she wondered if things might be different. When Alex proposed to Tineka, it was the easiest decision in the world. What he didn’t anticipate was the reaction - sometimes subtle, sometimes overt - from friends and strangers alike.

Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill's On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the...

One promise of democracy is the right of every citizen to vote. And yet, from our founding, strong political forces were determined to limit that right. The Supreme Court, Alexander Hamilton wrote, would protect the weak against this very sort of tyranny. Still, as On Account of Race forcefully demonstrates, through the better part of American history the Court has instead been a protector of white rule. And complex threats against the right to vote persist even today.