Separate, Steve Luxenberg
Separate, Steve Luxenberg
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List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
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Separate
The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation

Author: Steve Luxenberg

Narrator: Donald Corren

Unabridged: 19 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 02/12/2019


Synopsis

A myth-shattering narrative of how a nation embraced "separation" and its pernicious consequences. Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with "separate but equal," created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the nineteenth century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the twenty-first. Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours?race and equality. Wending its way through a half-century of American history, the narrative begins at the dawn of the railroad age, in the North, home to the nation's first separate railroad car, then moves briskly through slavery and the Civil War to Reconstruction and its aftermath, as separation took root in nearly every aspect of American life. Award-winning author Steve Luxenberg draws from letters, diaries, and archival collections to tell the story of Plessy v. Ferguson through the eyes of the people caught up in the case. Separate depicts indelible figures such as the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans, led by Louis Martinet, a lawyer and crusading newspaper editor; Homer Plessy's lawyer, Albion Tourgee, a best-selling author and the country's best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling endorsed separation; and Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Raymond

If you have ever taken an undergraduate course in American Government you will notice that there is always a chapter in the textbook on Civil Rights. Generally the chapter focuses on what civil rights are and gives an overview of how civil rights have been given and taken away across American histor......more

Goodreads review by Porter

This book might have gotten more stars from me had it lived up to its billing or changed its title. The title "Separate: the story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation." That's a pretty big broad description. But the book wasn't big and broad, it's what I call a mi......more

Regardless of ideology, there’s a relatively short list of United States Supreme Court cases that deserve to be included in any legal Hall of Shame. One is Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that slaves were the property of their owners and not citizens of the United States. A second is Korematsu v. Un......more