Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80

      Every white southerner understood         what keeping African Americans "down" meant and what it did         not mean. It did not mean going to court; it did not mean relying on the         law. It meant vigilante violence and lynching.       Looking at Vicksburg, Mississippi,         Roots of Disorder traces the origins of these terrible attitudes         to the day-to-day operations of local courts. In Vicksburg, white exploitation         of black labor through slavery evolved into efforts to use the law to         define blacks' place in society, setting the stage for widespread tolerance         of brutal vigilantism. Fed by racism and economics, whites' extralegal         violence grew in a hothouse of more general hostility toward law and courts.         Roots of Disorder shows how the criminal justice system itself         plays a role in shaping the attitudes that encourage vigilantism.       "Delivers what no other         study has yet attempted. . . . Waldrep's book is one of the first systematically         to use local trial data to explore questions of society and culture."         -- Vernon Burton, author of "A Gentleman and an Officer":         A Social and Military History of James B. Griffin's Civil War