The pig farmer's daughter and other tales of American justice : episodes of racism and sexism in the courts from 1865 to the present / Mary Frances Berry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berry, Mary Frances.

Contributor:

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc.

African Americans.

Sex crimes--United States.

Sex crimes.

United States.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration--United States.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration.

Penn Provenance:

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

8 unnumbered pages, 295 pages, 1 unnumbered page ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Vintage books edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Vintage Books, 2000.

Summary:

From the head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights comes a landmark study of the ways in which prejudice has shaped American justice from the Civil War era to the present. With an ear tuned to the social subtext of every judicial decision, Mary Frances Berry examines the stories told in more than a century's worth of state appellate court cases -- stories of seduction, rape, and murder, of contested paternity, property, and inheritance -- all of them dealing with racial and sexual relations. Together these stories form a vivid account of how the law has evolved -- or failed to evolve -- as society's attitudes have changed.

Ranging from a nineteenth-century Alabama case, in which a white woman was denied her divorce petition because an affair between a white man (her husband) and a black woman (his lover) was "of no consequence," to such recent, high-profile cases as the William Kennedy Smith and O. J. Simpson trials, the shocking, moving, ironic, and tragic stories in The Pig Farmer's Daughter each end in the laying down of law. And because the law perpetuates myths of race, gender, and class, they are stories that affect the lives of us all.

Contents:

The protection of home and hearth: sex outside of marriage

The crime that had no name: narratives of gay and lesbian sex

Of concubine and mistress

The business of sex

Promise her anything: seduction and its benefits

The wages of sex: child support, abortion, and infanticide

Suffer the children: incest and child rape

The pig farmer's daughter: rape and rumors of rape.

Notes:

Book design by Anthea Lingeman.

Cover design: Megan Wilson.

Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-281) and index.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Banks Collection copy has list of 5 discussion questions laid in.

ISBN:

0375707468

9780375707469

OCLC:

53830107