The black child-savers
Subtitle: racial democracy and juvenile justice
By: Geoff K. Ward
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Chicago; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780226873169; 9780226873183
Copyright date: 2012
Subjects: Discrimination in juvenile justice administration; Juvenile courts; Administration of Juvenile justice; Legal status, laws; African American children; History
Description: From the publisher. During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen-and-state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens," a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century. In The Black Child Savers, the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice, Geoff Ward examines the origins and organization of this separate and unequal juvenile justice system. Ward explores how generations of "black child-savers" mobilized to challenge the threat to black youth and community interests and how this struggle grew aligned with a wider civil rights movement, eventually forcing the formal integration of American juvenile justice. Ward's book reveals nearly a century of struggle to build a more democratic model of juvenile justice -- an effort that succeeded in part, but ultimately failed to deliver black youth and community to liberal rehabilitative ideals. At once an inspiring story about the shifting boundaries of race, citizenship, and democracy in America and a crucial look at the nature of racial inequality, The Black Child Savers is a stirring account of the stakes and meaning of social justice.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: The rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice; title: Part I: The origins and organization of Jim Crow juvenile justice; title: Citizen delinquent: race, liberal democracy, and the rehabilitative ideal; title: No refuge under law: racialized foundations of juvenile justice reform; title: Birth of a juvenile court; title: The social organization of Jim Crow justice; title: Part II: Rewriting the racial contract: the black child-saving movement; title: Uplifting black citizens delinquent: the vanguard movement, 1900-1930; title: Institutionalizing racial justice: the black surrogate parental state, 1930-1965; title: The early spoils of integration; title: The declining significance of inclusion: punitive reconstruction of the multiracial parental state.