Dred Scott's revenge
Subtitle: a legal history of race and freedom in America
By: Andrew P. Napolitano.
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Nashville, Tenn
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781595552655
Subjects: Scott, Dred, -- 1809-1858 -- Trials, litigation, etc; Race discrimination -- Law and legislation -- United States -- History; Civil rights -- United States -- History
Description: Racial hatred is one of the ugliest of human emotions. And the United States not only once condoned it, it also mandated it-----wove it right into the fabric of American jurisprudence. Federal and state governments legally suspended the free will of blacks for 150 years and then denied blacks equal protection of the law for another 150 . How did such crimes happen in America? How were the laws of the land, even the Constitution itself, twisted into repressive and oppressive legislation that denied people their inalienable rights? Taking the Dred Scott case of 1857 as his shocking center, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano tells the story of how it all happened and, through it, builds a damning case against American statesmen from Lincoln to Wilson, from FDR to JFK. Born a slave in Virginia, Dred Scott sued for freedom based on the fact that he had lived in states and territories where slavery was illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Scott, denied citizenship to blacks, and spawned more than a century of government-sponsored maltreatment that destroyed lives, suppressed freedom, and scarred our culture. Jim Crow, segregation, and a myraid of other evils were spawned by legally endorsed racial hatred and given a cultural, political, and legal context in which they could flourish. Dred Scott's Revenge is the story of America's long struggle to provide a new context-- one in which "All men are created equal," and government really treats them so .--Book jacket.

"This book is dedicated to all who suffered at the hands of any government because of the color of their skin. It has been written with the belief that with knowledge of history, hatred shall lose its grip on all governments in America."--Page [v].
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-277) and index.
Table of contents: title: Slavery comes to the new world; title: American slavery; title: Ratifying and interpreting the constitution; title: Dred Scott and the Missouri compromise; title: The Civil War; title: Abraham Lincoln and human freedom; title: Reconstruction : military rule in the post-Civil War South; title: Jim Crow; title: The federal government orchestrates racism; title: Black education in the South and the end of Jim Crow after Brown v. Board of Education; title: The civil rights legislation of the 1960s and afterward; title: How Democrats and Republicans use racial rhetoric to get elected; title: Justice and law enforcement; title: Baseball.