Law

Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, a riveting and tightly argued history of eugenics and its ripple effects, by acclaimed historian Elizabeth Catte.

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte’s Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia’s eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, it was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling “troublesome” women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel and it was wrong. As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got?

“Grounded, well-rendered, and highly disturbing,” Pure America is another necessary corrective to the historical record, a must-read for anyone concerned with how to repair its damage.

In October 1965, nearly 800 young people attempted to march from their churches in Natchez to protest segregation, discrimination and mistreatment by white leaders and elements of the Ku Klux Klan. As they exited the churches, local authorities forced the would-be marchers onto buses and charged them with parading without a permit, a local ordinance later ruled unconstitutional. For approximately 150 of these young men and women, this was only the beginning. They were taken to the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, where prison authorities subjected them to days of abuse, humiliation and punishment under horrific conditions. Most were African Americans in their teens and early twenties. Authors G. Mark LaFrancis, Robert Morgan and Darrell White reveal the injustice of this overlooked dramatic episode in civil rights history.

The 1925 case against high school coach and science teacher John Scopes, arrested for teaching evolution in defiance of a Tennessee state law, was America's original Trial of the Century. The proceedings began as a publicity stunt but grew into a landmark event in the nation's history. The trial featured three-time presidential candidate and fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan, who argued on behalf of the prosecution, and famed agnostic attorney Clarence Darrow, who helped defend Scopes. Although the Scopes case produced no legal precedent, the trial has been analyzed by historians, praised and vilified by politicians and preachers, cited in countless legal, political, and theological skirmishes, and retold in plays, movies, museum exhibits, and television documentaries. Images of America: The Scopes Monkey Trial examines the events that captured the attention of the world and still have much to teach us today.

Tangipahoa and St. Helena are two of the eight Florida Parishes in southeast Louisiana. In 1810, St. Helena Parish was founded, and Tangipahoa Parish followed in 1869. The historic St. Helena Parish, Louisiana, public school desegregation case predated the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Many families in the two parishes are the descendants of former slaves. They endured the harsh treatment of Jim Crow and segregation while remaining connected to the Florida Parishes. Notable Grammy-winning singer Irma Thomas and Collis Temple Jr., the first African American to play varsity basketball at Louisiana State University, call these parishes home. Many African Americans in the parishes are successful and are still working to improve race relations.

On the same day Theodore Roosevelt narrowly survived an assassination attempt, his press secretary handed him a newspaper editorial from the Iron Ore, a small-town daily located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Its publisher, George Newett, had printed, Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way; he gets drunk, too, and that not infrequently, and all his intimates know about it. Tired of having his boisterous personality equated with intoxication, Roosevelt angrily shouted, Let's go at him! and the paper was formally charged with a suit of libel. As the case convened, a cadre of admirals, statesmen and fellow explorers descended on Marquette to testify to T.R.'s unimpeachable personal character in the biggest libel trial of the early twentieth century.

James Brockman rose from shady character to preeminent defense attorney in Houston, Texas representing clients including gang leaders, jilted spouses, wealthy storekeepers and drunken on-duty policemen. These high-profile true crime and murder accounts take place between 1895 and 1910. They cross racial lines, revealing instances of separate and unequal justice in segregated Texas that had a lasting effect on the city and the state. His career gained national recognition, including his involvement in the most famous American murder case of the young twentieth century, when he himself was murdered leaving a dubious legacy.

Lawlessness in Texas did not end with the close of the cowboy era. It just evolved, swapping horses and pistols for cars and semiautomatics. From Patrolman Newt Stewart, killed by a group of servicemen in February 1900, to Whitesboro chief of police William Thomas Will Miller, run down by a vehicle in the line of duty in 1940, Ron DeLord and Cliff Caldwell present a comprehensive chronicle of the brave--and some not so brave--peace officers who laid down their lives in the service of the State of Texas in the first half of the twentieth century.

Experience the history of the antislavery movement in South Central Pennsylvania, a hotspot for both slave catchers and abolitionists alike.

Author Cooper Wingert reveals the history of the antislavery movement in South Central Pennsylvania. Influenced by religion and empathy, local abolitionists risked their reputations, fortunes and lives in the pursuit of what they believed was right. The sister of Benjamin Lundy, one of America's most famous abolitionists, married into an Adams County family and spent decades helping runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. National figures such as Frederick Douglass toured the region, delivering antislavery orations to mixed receptions. In 1859, John Brown planned his Harpers Ferry raid from Chambersburg while local abolitionists concealed his identity.

It was the spring of 1871. Pioneer entrepreneur Abigail Scott Duniway, on a business trip to purchase stock for her millinery store back in Oregon, waited breathlessly outside the suffrage convention in San Francisco. She hoped to meet Susan B. Anthony, whose career she so admired. And so they met, sparking a relationship that dramatically altered Duniway's life. The duo traveled for months on horseback, carriage, train and boat in their crucial, successful effort to ensure the right to vote for women nationwide. Author Jennifer Chambers revives the inspirational fight for women's rights by examining the dynamic between these two powerful women and how they changed not just the Beaver State but the country as a whole.

The Civil Rights movement in Atlanta is most often equated with the tireless work and inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.; however, a host of other courageous individuals, both known and unknown, came before, during, and after Dr. King to face the challenges of racism and segregation in the South. This unique pictorial history celebrates these people, their accomplishments, and the legacy they left for today's African-American youth in Atlanta.

A vivid narrative of the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote, framed by the demonstration known as The Great Suffrage Parade.

The Great Suffrage Parade was the first civil rights march to use the nation's capital as a backdrop. Despite sixty years of relentless campaigning by suffrage organizations, by 1913 only six states allowed women to vote. Then Alice Paul came to Washington, D.C. She planned a grand spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration - marking the beginning of a more aggressive strategy on the part of the women's suffrage movement. Groups of women protested and picketed outside the White House, and some were thrown into jail. Newspapers across the nation covered their activities. These tactics finally led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Author Rebecca Boggs Roberts narrates the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote.

A concise history of the controversial 1920 murder trial in suburban Boston, which saw two Italian immigrants executed for killings they may not have committed.