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Race, Place, and the Law 1836-1948

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Strictly speaking, apartheid in its literal legal form in South Africa, had no counterpart in post-Civil War United States. Or did it? This is the disturbing question raised by Delaney. He studies the legal apparatus in various American states, from before the Civil War to 1948. The largely successful attempts by segregationists to codify segregation into statutes is a disturbing echo of what the South African apartheid government was to do between 1948 and 1994.

The book shows struggles by different parties in the US, spanning decades, on how physical racial segregation in neighbourhoods was mostly achieved. While many books on Jim Crow have talked about other aspects, Delaney focuses on the court struggles, and brings alive the tensions of those times.