Synopses & Reviews
"Higginbotham provides a thoughtful and perceptive discussion on the role of race in America today. His keen legal analysis and compelling narrative has resulted in a fascinating examination of how far we have come as a nation, but more importantly, of how far we have to go." —Barbara A. Mikulski, U.S. Senator for Maryland When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbothams extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation—both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today—legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crows ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally. F. Michael Higginbotham is the Wilson H. Elkins Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He is the author of Race Law: Cases, Commentary, and Questions.
Review
"Rarely do Americans have the chance to speak freely about race to people beyond their own group. Higginbothams analysis provides a clear understanding of what it will mean to have a truly post-racial society in America, and what Americans of all races will need to do to bring about such a society. Ghosts of Jim Crow also provides an excellent foundation for robust dialogue among Americans about issues involving race and racism, from notions about racial superiority and inferiority to the unfortunate, continuing separation of the races, and victimization of African Americans. Higginbothams work reflects a level of honesty one rarely encounters because it challenges Americans, regardless of point of view, to look in the mirror and think about preconceived notions."-Freeman A. Hrabowski, III,President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Review
"In Ghosts of Jim Crow, Higginbotham provides a thoughtful and perceptive discussion on the role of race in America today. His keen legal analysis and compelling narrative has resulted in a fascinating examination of how far we have come as a nation, but more importantly, of how far we have to go."-Barbara A. Mikulski,U.S. Senator for Maryland
Review
"Ghosts of Jim Crow is an important work at a crucial time for our nation. Higginbotham offers scholarly insight into how America's race problem was created with a compelling prescription for its elimination."-Benjamin Todd Jealous,President and CEO of the NAACP
Review
A vision of enhancing racial equality—or simply lessening racial inequality—in America. By African-American legal scholar Higginbothams account, it wasnt until he entered a well-heeled private school that he encountered the N-word thrown his way. When it was, a white coach cracked down hard, issuing “a zero tolerance policy for racial epithets.” No more such epithets were forthcoming, though not necessarily out of any inborn kindness on the part of the man who cast that first stone. The takeaway for Higginbotham: Civil rights movements on the part of the oppressed are well and good, but “whites needed to stand up against racism in order for it to cease.” Things are better in some respects than in the 1960s, but, writes the author, the formula has changed. Blacks—and, to a greater or lesser extent, other nonwhite ethnic groups—are no longer judged and discriminated against strictly on the basis of race, but also on factors of class, education, income and access to political power, among others. For example, regarding sports: “Recruited black players could play in games, but ‘walk-on black players could not.” Against such broadband exclusion, Higginbotham mounts a spirited defense of affirmative action policies that is backed by good case law and by common sense—or at least a sense of fair play, for, as he notes, few complain about legacy students getting into a particular college, but people certainly do complain when the numbers of black—or Asian or Hispanic—students go up, particularly if there is a perception that they are somehow undeserving. America may be trending toward justice, but that trend is slow. Otherwise, Higginbotham asks elsewhere in this searching argument, why is there a disproportionate number of homeless blacks? A book worthy of a wide audience and wide discussion.-Kirkus Reviews,
Review
"Using the fiftieth anniversary of the 1954 Brown decision as his focus, legal-scholar Higginbotham addresses the legacy of Americas racial past and its impact on race equity today. What he wants is a new conversation on race that acknowledges the old paradigm of whites at the top and blacks at the bottom of a racial hierarchy, a model that continues to this day. Higginbotham reviews the history of slavery and Jim Crow-legalized segregation and its contemporary adaptations, with the objective of dismantling the old model that is manifested in significant black separation. He focuses on false notions of white superiority, black separation and white isolation, and black victimization. Changes in the law now place proof of disparate impact over proof of intent and go beyond the employment arena, but Higginbotham argues that we must consider our racial history and legal practices that continue to reduce racial inequality. If the courts and the nation as a whole valued racial diversity as a compelling state interest, affirmative action would be seen as an active tool to reduce racial isolation, which undercuts the pursuit of racial equity."-Vernon Ford,Booklist Online
Review
andldquo;This is a beautiful book, a tale of family, racial mixture, and identity in two settler colonial societies. . . . McGrathandrsquo;s stories of love and marriage across the color line, told in luminous prose, will delight. . . . and#160;Illicit Love ought to be a prizewinner.andrdquo;andmdash;Paul Spickard, author of Race in Mind
Review
andldquo;Ann McGrath reminds us that andlsquo;weddingsandrsquo; have long mixed politics and intimate passions in the interests of family, tribe, and nation. Heart-wrenching stories and subtle distinctions are laid bare in fine prose, and we find the kinship between Australia and the United States even closer than we might have thought.andrdquo;andmdash;James F. Brooks, author of Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands
Review
andldquo;Ann McGrathandrsquo;s brilliant history of intermarriage in the new nations of America and Australia reads like a novel. She uncovers hidden stories of forbidden love between settlers and Indigenous men and women that both shaped and confounded the colonial project. Writing in a style as tender as the very intimacies she describes, McGrath has created a model of how to wed private with political histories.andrdquo;andmdash;Margaret Jacobs, author of White Mother to a Dark Race andA Generation Removed
Review
andldquo;Superbly researched and imaginatively presented, McGrathandrsquo;s reconstruction of stories of marriages and sexual intimacies across the lines of race and domination between settler-colonial and indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Australia, is a remarkable instance of interleaving of the two andlsquo;nationalandrsquo; histories. . . . This doubly trans-national history has an unmistakable element of freshness about it that readers will no doubt welcome.andrdquo;andmdash;Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago and the author of The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth
Review
andldquo;This is a convincing and lively analysis of how marriage helped create the modern nation. Using case studies from the Cherokee Nation and northern Australia, McGrath deftly makes the case for the key role played by marriage in settler colony histories. McGrathandrsquo;s moving account is transnational history at its best.andrdquo;andmdash;Philippa Levine, author of The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset and Gender and Empire
Review
andldquo;Illicit Love is a stunning piece of comparative history. With the storytelling abilities of a novelist, and the detective skills of the accomplished historian that she is, Ann McGrath reveals how interracial relationships stirred a myriad of emotions among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Americans and Australians, and raised what became enduring questions about the meaning of Cherokee and Aboriginal identities.andrdquo;andmdash;Gregory Smithers, author of Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780sandndash;1890s
Review
andldquo;Read this book to explore both the direct and the twisted paths linking marriage and sovereignty, in richly detailed case studies spanning two disparate continents on both of which racial hierarchy characterized settler colonialism.andrdquo;andmdash;Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Harvard University
Review
andldquo;Investigating marriages between the colonized and their colonizers, Illicit Love is an astonishing transnational history of transgression, revealing intertwined lives and irreconcilable ideas, courage and conflict, denial and defiance, secrets and surveillance, love and violence. . . . McGrath asks novel questions, tells untold stories, and writes a new history of empire. This innovative and inventive work will itself open up new worlds for its readers.andrdquo;andmdash;Martha Hodes, author of White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South
Synopsis
When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham s extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow s ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally. Instructor's Guide "
Synopsis
A provocative, and timely, solution for ridding America of the traces of Jim Crow policies to create a truly post-racial landscape When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham's extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation--both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today--legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow's ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally. Instructor's Guide
Synopsis
Illicit Love is a history of love, sex, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and settler citizens at the heart of two settler colonial nations, the United States and Australia. Award-winning historian Ann McGrath illuminates interracial relationships from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century through stories of romance, courtship, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and colonizers in times of nation formation.
The romantic relationships of well-known and ordinary interracial couples provide the backdrop against which McGrath discloses the andldquo;marital middle groundandrdquo; that emerged as a primary threat to European colonial and racial supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds from the Age of Revolution to the Progressive Era. These relationships include the controversial courtship between white, Connecticut-born Harriett Gold and southern Cherokee Elias Boudinot; the Australian missionary Ernest Gribble and his efforts to socially segregate the settler and aboriginal population, only to be overcome by his romantic impulses for an aboriginal woman, Jeannie; the irony of Cherokee leader John Rossandrsquo;s marriage to a white woman, Mary Brian Stapler, despite his opposition to interracial marriages in the Cherokee Nation; and the efforts among ordinary people in the imperial borderlands of both the United States and Australia to circumvent laws barring interracial love, sex, and marriage.
Illicit Love reveals how marriage itself was used by disparate parties for both empowerment and disempowerment and came to embody the contradictions of imperialism. A tour de force of settler colonial history, McGrathandrsquo;s study demonstrates vividly how interracial relationships between Indigenous and colonizing peoples were more frequent and threatening to nation-states in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds than historians have previously acknowledged.
About the Author
Ann McGrath is a professor of history and the director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History at Australian National University. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including How to Write History That People Want to Read; Writing Histories: Imagination and Narration; and Contested Ground: A History of Australian Aborigines under the British Crown.
Table of Contents
Part I: Creating the Paradigm: Racial Hierarchy1. Constructing Racial Categories from the Nations Founding to the Civil War 2. Maintaining White Dominance during Reconstruction3. Preventing Black Excellence between Plessy and BrownPart II: Sustaining the Paradigm: White Isolation and Black Separation and Subordination4. Maintaining Racial Segregation in Schools and Neighborhoods from Brown to the 21st Century 5. Victimizing Blacks in the 21st Century Part III: Ending the Paradigm: Building a Post-Racial America6. Black Empowerment and Self-Help7. Integration and Equality