Black Trials

Table Of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Rituals of Citizenship

Part One: Colonial Visions, 1619–1773

The Birth of Black Trials

1. Let Us Make a Tryal
(Joseph Hanno and Cotton Mather, Boston, 1721)

2. This Villainous Conspiracy
(The Great Negro Plot, New York, 1741)

3. Air Too Pure
(Somerset’s Case, London, 1772)

Part Two: White Republic, 1776–1849

National Identity on Trial

4. I Should Not Turn Her Out
(Crandall v. Connecticut, Hartford, 1833)

5. All We Want Is Make Us Free
(The Amistad,Washington, 1841)

6. Christian Witness
( Jones v. Van Zandt, Cincinnati, 1847)

Part Three: New Americans, 1850–1896

Fulcrum

7. The Law of Blood
(John Brown, Virginia, 1859)

8. Original Purity
(The Ku Klux Klan Trials, South Carolina, 1871)

9. In the Nature of Things
(The Civil Rights Cases, California, 1883, and
Plessy v. Ferguson, Louisiana, 1896)

Part Four: Uplift the Race, 1903–1970

Overcoming Jim Crow

10. Black, White, and Red
(The Scottsboro Boys, Alabama, 1931)

11. Hearts and Minds
(Brown v. Board of Education, Kansas, 1954)

12. To Die for the People
(Huey Newton, California, 1968)

Part Five: After Caste, 1991–2004

Passage

13. Confirmation
(Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, Washington, 1991)

14. Statistics and Citizenship
(Mumia Abu-Jamal, Philadelphia, 2001)

Coda
Notes
Index