Rethinking the role of the courts in the lives of black Southerners

For years, black southerners’ ability to vote has been a key framework around which southern history is viewed. Focusing largely on the vote, however, leads to a particular story in which black southerners gradually lose the vote after Reconstruction, only to take up the fight for the vote again in the decades immediately before the civil rights movement. The focus shifts from institutional engagement during Reconstruction and its aftermath to resistance largely outside of white political institutions during the period of Jim Crow. For a large portion of this story, black men are the key actors. But if we widen our lens beyond voting rights and consider participation in government institutions—including participation in the courts—a different narrative emerges. Even when black southerners no longer could exercise the right to vote or act within other government institutions, some remained able to operate within their states’ civil courts.