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Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste
A sweeping history of American ideas of belonging and citizenship, told through the stories of fourteen legal cases that helped to shape our nation.
Spanning the period from colonial times to the present, Black Trials tells how the place of blacks in American society evolved through the actions of our courts of law. Some of the cases discussed are legendary, such as the ordeal of John Brown, the fiery abolitionist who was hanged for raiding Harpers Ferry in order to equip an army of insurgent slaves. Some are forgotten, such as that of Joseph Hanno, an eighteenth-century free black man charged not only with the brutal murder of his wife but with having brought smallpox to Boston. All of these cases compelled the legal system and the public to reconsider the place of blacks in America and, in so doing, to reconcile our founding ideals with the realities of American life. Drawing on a wealth of new archival sources, Weiner recounts the essential dramas of American civic identity–illuminating where our sense of minority rights has come from and where it might go.
Combining brilliant interdisciplinary analysis with riveting narrative, Black Trials offers a new way of thinking about inclusion and citizenship–and by extension about the meaning of America itself.
Spanning the period from colonial times to the present, Black Trials tells how the place of blacks in American society evolved through the actions of our courts of law. Some of the cases discussed are legendary, such as the ordeal of John Brown, the fiery abolitionist who was hanged for raiding Harpers Ferry in order to equip an army of insurgent slaves. Some are forgotten, such as that of Joseph Hanno, an eighteenth-century free black man charged not only with the brutal murder of his wife but with having brought smallpox to Boston. All of these cases compelled the legal system and the public to reconsider the place of blacks in America and, in so doing, to reconcile our founding ideals with the realities of American life. Drawing on a wealth of new archival sources, Weiner recounts the essential dramas of American civic identity–illuminating where our sense of minority rights has come from and where it might go.
Combining brilliant interdisciplinary analysis with riveting narrative, Black Trials offers a new way of thinking about inclusion and citizenship–and by extension about the meaning of America itself.
- GenresHistory
448 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2004
7 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Mark S. Weiner
8 books10 followersI'm writer, scholar, and occasional filmmaker who taught constitutional law and legal history at Rutgers for a spell before beginning a period of extended leave in 2012. I hold an A.B. in American Studies from Stanford University, a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
My first book, Black Trials: Citizenship From the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), received a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for its impact on the public understanding of law. My second book, Americans without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (NYU Press, 2006), received the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association. My third book, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals about the Future of Individual Freedom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), received the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
My fourth and latest book, Law’s Picture Books: The Yale Law Library Collection, a co-authored and co-edited exhibition catalogue, with Michael Widener (Talbot Publishing, 2017), received the Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award from the American Association of Law Libraries. The book is the catalogue of our critically-acclaimed exhibition of 2017 at the Grolier Club in New York, which also was accompanied by five of my short films.
I’ve been a visiting professor at Cardozo School of Law and the University of Connecticut School of Law. I’ve also taught quite a bit in Europe. In the fall of 2009, I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. In the spring of 2015, I was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Legal Philosophy at the University of Salzburg, Austria. And in 2018-19, I was the the Fulbright Uppsala University Distinguished Chair in American Studies in Uppsala, Sweden. I’ve likewise lectured and taught extensively about American constitutional law throughout Germany.
I live in Connecticut with my wife, a professor of nineteenth-century British literature at Wesleyan University. In our spare time, we enjoy hiking, biking, and watching women’s basketball, and I can spend endless hours fiddling with my stereo and doing home repair.
My first book, Black Trials: Citizenship From the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), received a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association for its impact on the public understanding of law. My second book, Americans without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (NYU Press, 2006), received the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association. My third book, The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals about the Future of Individual Freedom (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), received the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.
My fourth and latest book, Law’s Picture Books: The Yale Law Library Collection, a co-authored and co-edited exhibition catalogue, with Michael Widener (Talbot Publishing, 2017), received the Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award from the American Association of Law Libraries. The book is the catalogue of our critically-acclaimed exhibition of 2017 at the Grolier Club in New York, which also was accompanied by five of my short films.
I’ve been a visiting professor at Cardozo School of Law and the University of Connecticut School of Law. I’ve also taught quite a bit in Europe. In the fall of 2009, I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. In the spring of 2015, I was a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Legal Philosophy at the University of Salzburg, Austria. And in 2018-19, I was the the Fulbright Uppsala University Distinguished Chair in American Studies in Uppsala, Sweden. I’ve likewise lectured and taught extensively about American constitutional law throughout Germany.
I live in Connecticut with my wife, a professor of nineteenth-century British literature at Wesleyan University. In our spare time, we enjoy hiking, biking, and watching women’s basketball, and I can spend endless hours fiddling with my stereo and doing home repair.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 4, 2009
Gets 4 starts became Weiner provides interesting, easy to read essays on key legal cases (plus a foray into Clarence Thomas' confirmation) stretching from slave resistance to Mumia. However, if you're looking for Weiner to make good on the title's promise to discuss the concept of black citizenship then you'll have to keep looking. Though I think that all of these cases touch on citizenship, Weiner doesn't ever provide an analysis of how or why that is. Except for a few paragraphs at the end of each chapter, he leaves it to the reader to decide that. Had he done that he probably would've gotten 5 stars from me!
Want to read
May 17, 2008From a brillant young legal scholar comes this sweeping history of Americna ideas of belonging and citizenship, told through the stories of fourteen legal cases that helped to shape our nation.
Spanning three centuries the book details the legal challenges and strauggles that helped define the every-shifting identity of blacks in America.
Spanning three centuries the book details the legal challenges and strauggles that helped define the every-shifting identity of blacks in America.
September 9, 2013
Maybe Mr. Weiner meant "Trials . . . " as in trials and tribulations, because he goes off on any possible tangent so frequently that I lost interest and could not finish this thing. Not much to do with trials, but some good points were made.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews