250 Years of White Supremacy Through Law is a five-part series examining how American law created, protected, challenged, and continues to reshape racial hierarchy from 1776 to the present.
This series begins with the Constitution and slavery, moves through the Civil War and Reconstruction, traces the legal reconstruction of racial hierarchy after Reconstruction, examines the Civil Rights era, and concludes with the twenty-first-century struggle over law, race, and power.
The central question is simple: How has American law helped create and preserve racial hierarchy, and what has happened when people tried to dismantle it?
Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Dayton School of Law. This article was drafted with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model.
