2022 IPPY Silver Medal 2021 Foreword Indies Gold Winner for History 2021-22 Reader Views Literary Awards Silver Medal Winner 2021 Best Book Awards Finalist in US History sponsored by American Book Fest A Second Reckoning tells the story of John Snowden, a Black man accused of the murder of a pregnant white woman in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1917. He refused to confess despite undergoing torture, was tried--through legal shenanigans--by an all-white jury, and was found guilty on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death. Despite hair-raising, last-minute appeals to spare his life, Snowden was hanged for the crime. But decades after his death, thanks to tireless efforts by interested citizens and family members who believed him a victim of a "legal lynching," Snowden was pardoned posthumously by the governor of Maryland in 2001. A Second Reckoning uses Snowden's case to bring posthumous pardons into the national conversation about amends for past racial injustices. Scott D. Seligman argues that the repeal of racist laws and policies must be augmented by reckoning with America's judicial past, especially in cases in which prejudice may have tainted procedures or perverted verdicts, evidence of bias survives, and a constituency exists for a second look. Seligman illustrates the profound effects such acts of clemency have on the living and ends with a siren call for a reexamination of such cases on the national level by the Department of Justice, which officially refuses to consider them.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, Martin Luther King outlined a dream of an America where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. That dream has yet to be realized, but some three centuries ago it was a reality. Back then, neither social practice nor law recognized any special privileges in connection with being white. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, that had all changed. Racial oppression became the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans suffered under its yoke for more than two hundred years. In Volume II of The Invention of the White Race, Theodore Allen explores the transformation that turned African bond-laborers into slaves and segregated them from their fellow proletarians of European origin. In response to labor unrest, where solidarities were not determined by skin color, the plantation bourgeoisie sought to construct a buffer of poor whites, whose new racial identity would protect them from the enslavement visited upon African Americans. This was the invention of the white race, an act of cruel ingenuity that haunts America to this day.Allen’s acclaimed study has become indispensable in debates on the origins of racial oppression in America. In this updated edition, scholar Jeffrey B. Perry provides a new introduction, a select bibliography and a study guide.

Excerpt from Archives of Maryland, Vol. 64: Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, October 1773 to April 1774 Both houses replied in a pleasant way to the pleasant opening speech of the Governor. Both agreed that the October date was the best possible season for their private affairs and the Lower House went so far as to take out of the first draft of their reply a somewhat ill-natured reference to the Governor's action in proroguing the Assembly to get William Steuart out of the jail into which the Lower House had thrown him (archives, LXII, pp. Xxvii-xxix, 421-425) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Argues that before the 18th century, there was neither a white nor any other colour-determined race in North America. Allen traces the history of plantations and slavery to show that it was the degradation of African-bonded labourers into slaves that produced racism based on colour.