Unpunished Murder

On Easter Sunday of 1873, just eight years after the Civil War ended, a band of white supremacists marched into Grant Parish, Louisiana, and massacred over one hundred unarmed African Americans. The court case that followed would reach the highest courtin the land. Yet, following one of the most ghastly and barbaric incidents of mass murder in American history, not a single person was convicted. The opinion issued by the Supreme Court in US v. Cruikshank set in motion a process that would help create asociety in which black Americans were oppressed and denied basic human rights -- legally, according to the courts. These injustices would last for almost a hundred years, and many continue to exist to this day. In this compelling and thoroughly researched volume for young readers, Lawrence Goldstone traces the history of the laws and the figures involved in the story of how the Supreme Court helped institutionalize racism in the US justice system--