Melissa Milewski on Civil Litigation Between Black & White Southerners After Slavery

In this episode, Melissa Milewski, Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Sussex, discusses her excellent book "Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to Civil Rights" (2018), which was published by Oxford University Press. Milewski begins by describing her pioneering research into civil litigation between black and white southerners from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Civil Rights era, including her extensive use of state archives. She observes that African-American litigants won civil actions against whites far more frequently than might be expected. And she reflects on what this history of civil litigation can tell us about race relations, racial ideology, and the role of the judicial system. Milewski is on Twitter at @MilewskiMelissa. You can buy a copy of her book here. Highly recommended!Keywords: Jim Crow, Social Inquiry, civil law Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.