The Legal Status of the Negro

An important and much-cited snapshot in time before World War II and its aftermath dramatically changed the lives and legal relations of African Americans in the United States. This classic book is now available in a quality ebook edition, part of the Legal History & Biography Series from Quid Pro Books. Digital features include active Contents, linked notes, the original table retained from the 1940 printing, and even a fully-linked Index pointing to the specific location in the book.

First published in 1940, this book is famously considered to be the foundational treatise in examining the legal status of African Americans as applied and interpreted by U.S. courts and judges over several specific areas of civil rights and judicial process. Such topics include:

• basic citizenship
• education
• property rights
• labor and involuntary servitude
• Jim Crow laws and regulations
• segregation and lack of accommodations in institutions and prisons
• domestic law issues such as interracial marriage, illegitimacy, and adoption
• mob domination at trials of African Americans
• race discrimination in jury selection as well as racial prejudice of jurors, prejudicial remarks by attorneys and judges, and disparate sentences, and
• voting rights and elections before 1865, during reconstruction and its aftermath, and disfranchisement efforts to drive African-Americans away from the polls from 1890-1920

This book is the first comprehensive collection of legal materials in its field, and remains useful for researchers and historians, as well as anyone fascinated by the jaw-dropping realities carefully cataloged here. Also useful are its extensive bibliography and index; throughout, the book is well annotated with citations to specific cases. The new Quid Pro digital republication of this work retains these features and makes them easily accessible to the modern reader.