Journal Article•
The Second Amendment : Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration
01 Jan 1995-Journal on firearms and public policy (Second Amendment Foundation)-Vol. 7, Iss: 1, pp 75-111
TL;DR: Many of the issues surrounding the Second Amendment debate are raised in particularly sharp relief from the perspective of African-American history as mentioned in this paper, particularly those concerning self-defense, crime, participation in the security of the community, and the wisdom or utility of relying exclusively on the state for protection.
Abstract: Many of the issues surrounding the Second Amendment debate are raised in particularly sharp relief from the perspective of African-American history. With the exception of Native Americans, no people in American history have been more influenced by violence than blacks. Private and public violence maintained slavery. The nation's most destructive conflict ended the "peculiar institution." That all too brief experiment in racial egalitarianism, Reconstruction, was ended by private violence and abetted by Supreme Court sanction Jim Crow was sustained by private violence, often with public assistance. If today the memories of past interracial violence are beginning to fade, they are being quickly replaced by the frightening phenomenon of black-on-black violence, making life all too precarious for poor blacks in inner city neighborhoods. Questions raised by the Second Amendment, particularly those concerning self-defense, crime, participation in the security of the community, and the wisdom or utility of relying exclusively on the state for protection, thus take on a peculiar urgency in light of the modern Afro-American experience.
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Dissertation•
01 May 2016
TL;DR: In the early 1920s, an African American named Broadus Miller was accused of killing a fifteen-year-old white millworker in Morganton, North Carolina, following a manhunt lasting nearly two weeks, and his body then publicly displayed on the Morganton courthouse lawn as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the summer of 1927, an African American named Broadus Miller was accused of killing a fifteen-year-old white millworker in Morganton, North Carolina. Following a manhunt lasting nearly two weeks, Miller was killed and his body then publicly displayed on the Morganton courthouse lawn. This dissertation uses Broadus Miller’s personal history as a narrative thread to examine the world within which he lived and died. Miller’s story exemplifies much larger patterns and provides a unique lens on race relations and criminal justice in early twentieth-century North and South Carolina. In Miller’s native South Carolina, white supremacy was maintained through lynching, but violence permeated all forms of human interaction and most homicides featured same-race perpetrators and victims. In the early 1920s, Miller spent three years in the South Carolina state penitentiary after killing an African American woman. The court process in his case illustrates the role of race within the South Carolina legal and judicial systems, while examining conditions in the penitentiary during his incarceration demonstrates that rather than serving any rehabilitative function, the penitentiary was a highly lucrative enterprise designed to benefit penal officials. Following Miller’s release from prison, he embarked upon the same journey as thousands of other black South Carolinians in the early 1920s, when the boll weevil ravaged the state’s cotton fields and precipitated a mass outmigration of farm laborers. Like Miller, many of these migrants moved to North Carolina, where they faced a hostile and unwelcoming environment in which the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups flourished. By the 1920s white supremacist violence in North Carolina was largely masked by formal law. A unique feature of North Carolina law was the state’s outlawry statute, which was used against Broadus Miller and which gave private citizens the legal authority to kill him. The statute’s origins and application cast a stark light on the nature of state-sanctioned violence. The killing of Miller and exhibition of his dead body took place on the borderline between lynching and state-sanctioned execution—and showed how indefinite that borderline was. INDEX WORDS: Homicide, Lynching, Outlawry, Racism, South Carolina, North Carolina, Asheville, Morganton, Greenwood County, Ku Klux Klan, Boll weevil, Julian Shakespeare Carr, Chain gang, Penitentiary, Junior Order United American Mechanics, Samuel McDowell Tate, Beatrice Cobb, Henry Berry Lowry THE WORLD OF BROADUS MILLER: HOMICIDE, LYNCHING, AND OUTLAWRY IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA
43 citations
TL;DR: This article revisited the Weberian presumption of the state's monopoly on legitimate violence and conducted interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michigan, and New Mexico to investigate the role of race in police violence.
Abstract: Focusing on police chiefs in three states, this study revisits the Weberian presumption of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Seventy-nine interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, Michig...
41 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how specific types of gun ownership interact with Southernness, controlling for the effects of other variables, to determine preferences for three different types of Gun Control.
Abstract: Southerners have been found to have higher levels of gun ownership than persons who reside elsewhere. This may be due to cultural factors peculiar to the Southern region. If so, this would have interesting implications for gun control initiatives. Although the differential in gun ownership has been linked to varying support or opposition to gun control, the relationship between this variable and specific types of gun control has not been examined. With this in mind, we investigate how specific types of gun ownership interact with Southernness, controlling for the effects of other variables, to determine preferences for three different types of gun control. We use 1975 data collected by DMI on a stratified random sample of 1538 noninstitutionalized adults in the United States. An analysis of several logistic regression equations indicates that a cultural component, related to Southernness, affects attitudes toward gun control. Southerners, in general, were the most opposed to permits and handgun bans. Southern shotgun owners, in particular, were found to be the most opposed to gun registration. These findings point to the need to consider region, culture, and gun type when addressing the issue of gun control.
39 citations
Book•
29 Apr 2009TL;DR: Horwitz and Anderson as discussed by the authors reveal that the proponents of this view base their argument on a deliberate misreading of history and expose Insurrectionism - not government oppression - as the true threat to freedom in the U.S. today.
Abstract: The NRA steadfastly maintains that the 30,000 gun-related deaths and 300,000 assaults with firearms in the United States every year are a small price to pay to guarantee freedom. As former NRA President Charlton Heston put it, 'freedom isn't free'.And when gun enthusiasts talk about Constitutional liberties guaranteed by the Second Amendment, they are referring to freedom in a general sense, but they also have something more specific in mind - freedom from government oppression. They argue that the only way to keep federal authority in check is to arm individual citizens who can, if necessary, defend themselves from an aggressive government.In the past decade, this view of the proper relationship between government and individual rights and the insistence on a role for private violence in a democracy has been co-opted by the conservative movement. As a result, it has spread beyond extreme 'militia' groups to influence state and national policy.In "Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea", Josh Horwitz and Casey Anderson reveal that the proponents of this view base their argument on a deliberate misreading of history. The Insurrectionist myth has been forged by twisting the facts of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States, the denial of civil rights to African-Americans after the Civil War, and the rise of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler. Here, Horwitz and Anderson set the record straight. Then, challenging the proposition that more guns equal more freedom, they expose Insurrectionism - not government oppression - as the true threat to freedom in the U.S. today.
33 citations
Book•
06 Oct 2014TL;DR: The authors explores the complex ways in which political debates and legal reforms regarding the criminalization of racial violence have shaped the development of American racial history and offers a new historical and theoretical perspective for analyzing the limits of current attempts to use criminal legislation as a weapon against racism.
Abstract: This book explores the complex ways in which political debates and legal reforms regarding the criminalization of racial violence have shaped the development of American racial history. Spanning previous campaigns for criminalizing slave abuse, lynching, and Klan violence and contemporary debates about the legal response to hate crimes, this book reveals both continuity and change in terms of the political forces underpinning the enactment of new laws regarding racial violence in different periods and of the social and institutional problems that hinder the effective enforcement of these laws. A thought-provoking analysis of how criminal law reflects and constructs social norms, this book offers a new historical and theoretical perspective for analyzing the limits of current attempts to use criminal legislation as a weapon against racism.
31 citations
References
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TL;DR: The Contagion of Liberty 1. Slavery 2. Establishment of Religion 3. Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics IV. The Logic of Rebellion A Note on Conspiracy V. Sovereignty VI. Fulfillment.
Abstract: I. The Literature of Revolution II. Sources and Traditions III. Power and Liberty: A Theory of Politics IV. The Logic of Rebellion A Note on Conspiracy V. Transformation 1. Representation and Consent 2. Constitution and Rights 3. Sovereignty VI. The Contagion of Liberty 1. Slavery 2. Establishment of Religion 3. The Democracy Unleashed 4. "Whether Some Degree of Respect Be Not Always Due from Inferiors to Superiors" Postscript. Fulfillment: A Commentary on the Constitution Index
1,381 citations
1,058 citations
Book•
08 Mar 1988TL;DR: This "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) made history when it was originally published in 1988 as discussed by the authors, and redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery.
Abstract: This "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) made history when it was originally published in 1988. It redefined how Reconstruction was viewed by historians and people everywhere in its chronicling of how Americans -- black and white -- responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) has since gone on to become the classic work on the wrenching post-Civil War period -- an era whose legacy reverberates still today in the United States.
925 citations
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: This report contains the results of the study evaluated the magnitude of the impact of injury on individuals, government programs, and society at large in terms of economic cost and of the effects of Injury on people's lives.
Abstract: In 1987, Congress directed that research be conducted to evaluate the impact of injury and associated disability on the United States. This report contains the results of that study. The study evaluated the magnitude of the impact of injury on individuals, government programs, and society at large in terms of economic cost and of the effects of injury on people's lives. Comprehensive data on incidence, cause, severity, lifetime cost, life year and productivity losses, and source of funds disaggregated by age and sex are presented. The following topics are addressed: Number of people in the United States who are injured and number who die due to injury annually; Aggregate lifetime and per person cost to society of injury; Long-term cost of treatment and rehabilitation of injuries; Years of life lost due to the disabling effects of injury and premature death; Age groups most affected by injury; Number of persons injured from the major causes of injury and associated cost; Number of persons fatally injured, hospitalized, and nonhospitalized and associated cost; Burden of injury cost by source of payment; Valuing pain and suffering; Potential savings from preventive intervention strategies; Federal government investment in research on prevention and control of injury relative to research dollars spent for the other leading causes of death; Life-long consequences of injury to injured persons and their families; and Recommendations emerging from the study for the prevention, control, and further research on the incidence and cost of injury. A Glossary and an Index are provided.
504 citations
474 citations