Race and Justice in America

Race and Justice in America

Meeting Room 5, Main Library

6:00pm – 7:00 pm

ALL books for this series are accessible and available to borrow from the Reader’s Advisory Desk at the Main Library, where you may register for the program, borrow, and return copies of the books. For more information, contact Elizabeth at hartsig@portlandpubliclibrary.org or the Reader’s Advisory Desk at 871-1700 ext. 705. This discussion series is free.

January 23, 2017 – The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Contributors include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnette Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel Jose Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young.
February 6, 2017 – Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson
February 27, 2017 – The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots, by Brenda Stevenson
March 20, 2017 – Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched 100 Years of Federalism, by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips
April 10, 2017 – Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, by Kevin Boyle

Race and Justice in America will explore the complex, and often uneasy, relationship between black Americans and the American justice system. Developed by project scholar Leroy Rowe, Assistant Professor of African American History and Politics at USM, the books selected for Race and Justice in America will provide historical analyses of selected events, court rulings, and public policies that help to explain the black American struggle for citizenship, civil rights, and equal treatment under the laws.

Race and Justice in America also explores the changing boundaries and content of state and national citizenship. The core questions that the series engages are: how was membership in the social and political community defined for African Americans and whites in the United States? How have those definitions changed over time? And in what ways did individuals and communities exercise rights as citizens and experience those rights differently? Race and Justice in America is part of The 14th Amendment in American Life and Imagination, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which explores concepts of equality, citizenship, and liberty statewide.