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Book The Search for Racial Equality Through Law

Download or read book The Search for Racial Equality Through Law written by William Shirley and published by . This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Reimagining Equality

Download or read book Reimagining Equality written by Anita Hill and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Home : a place that provides access to every opportunity America has to offer.--A.H."--P. [vii]

Book Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional

Download or read book Is Racial Equality Unconstitutional written by Mark Golub and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some, the idea of a color-blind constitution signals a commonsense ideal of equality and a new "post-racial" American era. For others, it supplies a narrow constitutional vision, which serves to disqualify many of the tools needed to combat persistent racial inequality in the United States. Rather than taking a position either for or against color-blindness, Mark Golub takes issue with the blindness/consciousness dichotomy itself. This book demonstrates how color-blind constitutionalism conceals its own race-conscious political commitments in defense of existing racial hierarchy, and renders the pursuit of racial justice as a constitutionally impermissible goal.

Book The Color of Law  A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Download or read book The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America written by Richard Rothstein and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

Book And We Are Not Saved

Download or read book And We Are Not Saved written by Derek Bell and published by . This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished legal scholar and civil rights activist employs a series of dramatic fables and dialogues to probe the foundations of America’s racial attitudes and raise disturbing questions about the nature of our society.

Book Race  Law  and American Society

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2013-05-02
  • ISBN : 1135087946
  • Pages : 497 pages

Download or read book Race Law and American Society written by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of Gloria Browne-Marshall’s seminal work , tracing the history of racial discrimination in American law from colonial times to the present, is now available with major revisions. Throughout, she advocates for freedom and equality at the center, moving from their struggle for physical freedom in the slavery era to more recent battles for equal rights and economic equality. From the colonial period to the present, this book examines education, property ownership, voting rights, criminal justice, and the military as well as internationalism and civil liberties by analyzing the key court cases that established America’s racial system and demonstrating the impact of these court cases on American society. This edition also includes more on Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos. Race, Law, and American Society is highly accessible and thorough in its depiction of the role race has played, with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, in shaping virtually every major American social institution.

Book Shades of Freedom

    Book Details:
  • Author : A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 1998-06-11
  • ISBN : 0198028679
  • Pages : 353 pages

Download or read book Shades of Freedom written by A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-11 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few individuals have had as great an impact on the law--both its practice and its history--as A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr. A winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, he has distinguished himself over the decades both as a professor at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard, and as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals. But Judge Higginbotham is perhaps best known as an authority on racism in America: not the least important achievement of his long career has been In the Matter of Color, the first volume in a monumental history of race and the American legal process. Published in 1978, this brilliant book has been hailed as the definitive account of racism, slavery, and the law in colonial America. Now, after twenty years, comes the long-awaited sequel. In Shades of Freedom, Higginbotham provides a magisterial account of the interaction between the law and racial oppression in America from colonial times to the present, demonstrating how the one agent that should have guaranteed equal treatment before the law--the judicial system--instead played a dominant role in enforcing the inferior position of blacks. The issue of racial inferiority is central to this volume, as Higginbotham documents how early white perceptions of black inferiority slowly became codified into law. Perhaps the most powerful and insightful writing centers on a pair of famous Supreme Court cases, which Higginbotham uses to portray race relations at two vital moments in our history. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 declared that a slave who had escaped to free territory must be returned to his slave owner. Chief Justice Roger Taney, in his notorious opinion for the majority, stated that blacks were "so inferior that they had no right which the white man was bound to respect." For Higginbotham, Taney's decision reflects the extreme state that race relations had reached just before the Civil War. And after the War and Reconstruction, Higginbotham reveals, the Courts showed a pervasive reluctance (if not hostility) toward the goal of full and equal justice for African Americans, and this was particularly true of the Supreme Court. And in the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which Higginbotham terms "one of the most catastrophic racial decisions ever rendered," the Court held that full equality--in schooling or housing, for instance--was unnecessary as long as there were "separate but equal" facilities. Higginbotham also documents the eloquent voices that opposed the openly racist workings of the judicial system, from Reconstruction Congressman John R. Lynch to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan to W. E. B. Du Bois, and he shows that, ironically, it was the conservative Supreme Court of the 1930s that began the attack on school segregation, and overturned the convictions of African Americans in the famous Scottsboro case. But today racial bias still dominates the nation, Higginbotham concludes, as he shows how in six recent court cases the public perception of black inferiority continues to persist. In Shades of Freedom, a noted scholar and celebrated jurist offers a work of magnificent scope, insight, and passion. Ranging from the earliest colonial times to the present, it is a superb work of history--and a mirror to the American soul.

Book Promises to Keep

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donald G. Nieman
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2020-02-03
  • ISBN : 0190071656
  • Pages : 369 pages

Download or read book Promises to Keep written by Donald G. Nieman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-03 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Widely considered the first history of US Constitutionalism that places African Americans at the center, Promises to Keep is a compelling overview of how conflict over African Americans' place in American society has shaped the Constitution, law, and our understanding of citizenship and rights. Both authoritative and accessible, this revised and expanded second edition incorporates key insights from the last three decades of scholarship and makes sense of recent developments in civil rights, from the War on Drugs to the rise of Black Lives Matter. Promises to Keep shows how African Americans have played a critical role in transforming the Constitution from a bulwark of slavery to a document that is truer to the nation's promise of equality. The book begins by examining debates about race from the Revolutionary Era at the Constitutional Convention and covers the establishment of civil rights protections during Reconstruction, the Jim Crow backlash, and the evolution of the civil rights movement, from the formation of the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People to legal victories and massive organized protests. Comprehensive in scope, this book moves from debates over slavery at the nation's founding to contemporary discussions of affirmative action, voting rights, mass incarceration, and police brutality. In the process, it provides readers with a historical perspective critical to understanding some of today's most important social and political issues.

Book Simple Justice

    Book Details:
  • Author : Richard Kluger
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2011-08-24
  • ISBN : 030754608X
  • Pages : 882 pages

Download or read book Simple Justice written by Richard Kluger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple Justice is the definitive history of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epic struggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensive research with original interviews with surviving participants, Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human and legal drama in the years before 1954, the cumulative assaults on the white power structure that defended segregation, and the step-by-step establishment of a team of inspired black lawyers that could successfully challenge the law. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation, Kluger has updated his work with a new final chapter covering events and issues that have arisen since the book was first published, including developments in civil rights and recent cases involving affirmative action, which rose directly out of Brown v. Board of Education.

Book The Rage of Innocence

Download or read book The Rage of Innocence written by Kristin Henning and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant analysis of the foundations of racist policing in America: the day-to-day brutalities, largely hidden from public view, endured by Black youth growing up under constant police surveillance and the persistent threat of physical and psychological abuse "Storytelling that can make people understand the racial inequities of the legal system, and...restore the humanity this system has cruelly stripped from its victims.” —New York Times Book Review Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.’s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America’s irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children. Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents. Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence is an essential book for our moment.

Book Blinded by Sight

    Book Details:
  • Author : Osagie Obasogie
  • Publisher : Stanford University Press
  • Release : 2013-12-11
  • ISBN : 0804789274
  • Pages : 288 pages

Download or read book Blinded by Sight written by Osagie Obasogie and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colorblindness has become an integral part of the national conversation on race in America. Given the assumptions behind this influential metaphor—that being blind to race will lead to racial equality—it's curious that, until now, we have not considered if or how the blind "see" race. Most sighted people assume that the answer is obvious: they don't, and are therefore incapable of racial bias—an example that the sighted community should presumably follow. In Blinded by Sight,Osagie K. Obasogie shares a startling observation made during discussions with people from all walks of life who have been blind since birth: even the blind aren't colorblind—blind people understand race visually, just like everyone else. Ask a blind person what race is, and they will more than likely refer to visual cues such as skin color. Obasogie finds that, because blind people think about race visually, they orient their lives around these understandings in terms of who they are friends with, who they date, and much more. In Blinded by Sight, Obasogie argues that rather than being visually obvious, both blind and sighted people are socialized to see race in particular ways, even to a point where blind people "see" race. So what does this mean for how we live and the laws that govern our society? Obasogie delves into these questions and uncovers how color blindness in law, public policy, and culture will not lead us to any imagined racial utopia.

Book Race  Law  and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the U S

Download or read book Race Law and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the U S written by Geeta Kapur and published by Aspen Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 681 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race, Law, and the Struggle for Racial Equality in the U.S. examines how the American legal system has legitimized and institutionalized racism, from slavery to Jim Crow segregation to the modern-day era of mass incarceration. This book, the first of its kind, has evolved from the author’s own experiences of both teaching race and the law for many years and practicing Civil Rights Law for over two decades. The text employs a novel interdisciplinary approach through primary source materials; archival records, photographs, and maps; and statutes and cases, to show how the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of the U.S. have deployed the law for racial control and to foster systemic racism in the areas of education, property and housing, criminal system, and voting rights. This study of race and law provides the historical and contemporary meaning of race and racism and explores the difference between justice and law; identifies the role of race and racism in early U.S. history and in the nation’s governing documents; explains how the legal system has historically limited access to citizenship, education, property and housing, and voting rights for African Americans; describes the epidemic of mass incarceration, its stakeholders and its collateral consequences; and, most importantly, guides students to be compassionate lawyers, committed to creating a more just and merciful society. Benefits for instructors and students: The text, based on the curriculum of a race law course that has been taught for over 10 years, examines and connects historical and contemporary legal issues in the areas of education, property and housing, the criminal legal system, and voting rights Rich primary historical materials provide deep exploration of the connection of the law and racism, from past to present A wide variety of photographs, maps, and illustrations provide real examples and context Detailed background stories put cases and excerpts in vivid context The text includes explanations of the origin of race and the different manifestations of racism The author’s riveting writing style will be of high interest to students A bibliography provides an overview of the challenges faced by African Americans during the struggles for voting rights—from slavery, to post-reconstruction and Jim Crow restrictions, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to U.S. Supreme Court cases and constitutional constraints The text features a full treatment of the origin, the legal history of affirmative action, and the 2023 affirmative action decision of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Harvard University

Book Race  Racism  and American Law

    Book Details:
  • Author : Derrick A. Bell
  • Publisher : Aspen Publishing
  • Release : 2023-02-01
  • ISBN : 1543850308
  • Pages : 1266 pages

Download or read book Race Racism and American Law written by Derrick A. Bell and published by Aspen Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-01 with total page 1266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for use with the authors’ forthcoming casebook, Race, Racism, and American Law, Seventh Edition (forthcoming 2024), Race, Racism, and American Law: Leading Cases and Materials includes significant historical and contemporary cases and materials edited with an aim to foreground the most relevant sections and passages to illustrate the crucial role of race in the formation of US law. This new edition of Derrick Bell’s groundbreaking textbook Race, Racism, and American Law, like prior versions, eschews a traditional casebook format. The locus of analysis in this text is the struggle for racial justice, and its underlying history and political context as reflected in the ongoing contestation over law, legal reform, and transformation. As such the supplement includes but is not limited to Supreme Court cases. We follow Bell’s model of locating all edited cases and materials in the supplement, reserving the book’s text to provide historical and political context for significant cases or legislative actions, along with hypothetical questions, comments, and other tools of analysis. Professors and students will benefit from: Both legal and non-legal primary source material.Leading Cases and Materials includes selected historical and contemporary cases, legislation, and other legal materials that foreground the crucial role of race and racism, and the struggle for racial justice, within and through US law. A carefully selected compilation of United States Supreme Court Cases. Each case is chosen to guide readers through elements of US jurisprudence which reflect both reform and retrenchment of societal inequity as it relates to the question of race. Cases range from significant 18th century cases such as Johnson v. McIntosh (1823) (indigenous people cannot transfer full title to land) to contemporary civil rights decisions such as Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) (further limiting the reach of the Voting Rights Act) and Comcast v. National Association of African American Owned Media (2020) (limiting protections against racial discrimination in contracting). Doctrinally and theoretically significant cases from lower federal courts and state courts. Cases from lower courts are selected to provide critical race insights into how judicial institutions outside the US Supreme Court shape doctrine and debates over race and racial inequality. Cases range from Acre v. Douglass (9th Cir. 2015) (ban on teaching of Mexican American studies found unconstitutional) to Lobato v. Taylor (Colo. 2003) (speculator attempts to divest Mexican American landowners with defective title derived from Mexico). Significant legislative and executive legal documents. This supplement includes materials going beyond traditional edited cases, reflecting the insight that a critical race analysis necessitates a grasp of law beyond the courts. Additional materials range from the United States Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department (2015) to the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020. Benefits for instructors and students: Provokes discussion on contemporary and historical legal controversies cases and materials edited to address issues the lens of critical race theory’s conceptual framework

Book 1960Now

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sheila Pree Bright
  • Publisher : Chronicle Books
  • Release : 2018-10-23
  • ISBN : 1452170843
  • Pages : 202 pages

Download or read book 1960Now written by Sheila Pree Bright and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “powerful photo collection” documenting the Black Lives Matter movement and its parallels to the historic fight for civil rights (Publishers Weekly). The fight for equality continues, from 1960 to now. Combining portraits of past and present social justice activists with documentary images from recent protests throughout the United States, #1960Now sheds light on the parallels between the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Shelia Pree Bright’s striking black-and-white photographs capture the courage and conviction of ‘60s leaders and a new generation of activists, offering a powerful reminder that the fight for justice is far from over. #1960Now represents an important new contribution to American protest photography. “Visually arresting . . . activism photography shot across the U.S., from Ferguson, Missouri, to Atlanta to Philadelphia.” —Essence “While millions of cellphone photos are generated each day—some forceful testaments to racial violence and injustice—few possess the grace and quiet lyricism of her images.” —The New York Times Lens blog

Book Brown v  Board of Education

    Book Details:
  • Author : James T. Patterson
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2001-03-01
  • ISBN : 0199880840
  • Pages : 318 pages

Download or read book Brown v Board of Education written by James T. Patterson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2004 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to end segregation in public schools. Many people were elated when Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in May 1954, the ruling that struck down state-sponsored racial segregation in America's public schools. Thurgood Marshall, chief attorney for the black families that launched the litigation, exclaimed later, "I was so happy, I was numb." The novelist Ralph Ellison wrote, "another battle of the Civil War has been won. The rest is up to us and I'm very glad. What a wonderful world of possibilities are unfolded for the children!" Here, in a concise, moving narrative, Bancroft Prize-winning historian James T. Patterson takes readers through the dramatic case and its fifty-year aftermath. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits (at great personal cost); to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision. Others include segregationist politicians like Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas; Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon; and controversial Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas. Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph--but was it? Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. Could the Court--or President Eisenhower--have done more to ensure compliance with Brown? Did the decision touch off the modern civil rights movement? How useful are court-ordered busing and affirmative action against racial segregation? To what extent has racial mixing affected the academic achievement of black children? Where indeed do we go from here to realize the expectations of Marshall, Ellison, and others in 1954?

Book Until Justice Be Done  America s First Civil Rights Movement  from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Download or read book Until Justice Be Done America s First Civil Rights Movement from the Revolution to Reconstruction written by Kate Masur and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the 2022 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, Northern and Southern, in the decades before the Civil War. The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states’ insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement’s ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.

Book Justice Deferred

    Book Details:
  • Author : Orville Vernon Burton
  • Publisher : Harvard University Press
  • Release : 2021-05-04
  • ISBN : 0674975642
  • Pages : 465 pages

Download or read book Justice Deferred written by Orville Vernon Burton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first comprehensive accounting of the U.S. Supreme CourtÕs race-related jurisprudence, a distinguished historian and renowned civil rights lawyer scrutinize a legacy too often blighted by racial injustice. The Supreme Court is usually seen as protector of our liberties: it ended segregation, was a guarantor of fair trials, and safeguarded free speech and the vote. But this narrative derives mostly from a short period, from the 1930s to the early 1970s. Before then, the Court spent a century largely ignoring or suppressing basic rights, while the fifty years since 1970 have witnessed a mostly accelerating retreat from racial justice. From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, historian Orville Vernon Burton and civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the CourtÕs race recordÑa legacy at times uplifting, but more often distressing and sometimes disgraceful. For nearly a century, the Court ensured that the nineteenth-century Reconstruction amendments would not truly free and enfranchise African Americans. And the twenty-first century has seen a steady erosion of commitments to enforcing hard-won rights. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the CourtÕs race jurisprudence. Addressing nearly two hundred cases involving AmericaÕs racial minorities, the authors probe the parties involved, the justicesÕ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. We learn of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall; villains, including Roger Taney; and enigmas like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history also reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the countryÕs promise of equal rights for all.