Litigating in Black and White: Black Legal Culture(s), White Violence, and Tort Law during Jim Crow

This project examines Black Americans’ use of civil law to resist white and police violence from the 1880s to the 1960s. The book is meant to historicize the legal maneuvers of Black families after police kill unarmed Black people or use excessive force. This research partnership would be in service of the last chapter of the book, which examines Black newspapers’ changing rhetoric about police brutality and the use of lawsuits from the 1940s through the 1960s. Further, the chapter seeks to understand the role the NAACP played in encouraging people to sue police officers by examining letters from Black Americans asking the NAACP to assist in cases of police brutality and how the NAACP responded.

For the purposes of this research assistantship, students would be helping me search digitized newspapers to see how Black newspapers discussed police brutality and to see if they were calling for Black Americans to sue. Additionally, research assistants would help me wade through NAACP police brutality files to see if Black Americans were asking the NAACP for legal assistance or advice and to see how the NAACP responded. In both cases, research partners would also transcribe material that would be later used in drafting the chapter.