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Title details for By Hands Now Known by Margaret A. Burnham - Available

By Hands Now Known

Jim Crow's Legal Executioners

by Margaret A. Burnham
Diana Blue
Audiobook
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A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period-and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 27, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696609517
      • File size: 316461 KB
      • Duration: 10:59:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2023

      Burnham's (law, Northeastern Univ.; director, Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project) debut transports listeners to the hate-filled and ugly world of the Jim Crow South. Burnham presents listeners with historical details based on legal records, firsthand accounts, and family lore of systemic, widely condoned, and egregious acts of violence. Burnham addresses the period when enslaved people were considered property, to be bought and sold, and continues through various Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction practices that deprived the formerly enslaved population of fundamental constitutional rights. Case by case, she presents listeners with horrific acts of injustice--many of which were condoned by organizations that should have protected the vulnerable--utterly overlooked by the judicial system. Narrator Diana Blue's composed but impassioned voice recounts atrocity after atrocity as though pleading a case to a jury. Her clear and even delivery assists listeners' understanding of each citizen's betrayal, although some listeners may be distracted by scattered mispronunciations throughout. Burnham leaves the case for reparations for the end of the book, providing listeners with food for thought. VERDICT An essential listen that should be a part of every collection. Burnham's message that a true reckoning with the past can only happen with the help of informed, justice-minded citizens resonates.--Laura Trombley

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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