Thursday, June 23, 2016

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case

As part of its series “Tripod: New Orleans at 300,” New Orleans’s NPR station (WWNO) has recently aired an interview with Michael Ross, University of Maryland, on his book The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case: Race, Law, and Justice in the Reconstruction Era (Oxford, 2015).  The podcast and accompanying story are here.  From the standpoint of confederates, Professor Ross explained, Reconstruction was the world turned upside down.  "White men and black men could serve together on a jury and reach a unanimous verdict of acquitting two African American women of a sensational crime because they believe the government did not prove its case.”