A Reading List on Exclusion and Racism in the Legal History in the United States

The legal history of the United States is full of laws designed to exclude and segregate the racialized other. This reading list recommends scholarship that sheds light on that history.

March 6, 2019, 12pm PST | James Brasuell | @CasualBrasuell

Louisville Metro Government

Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class, and Real Estate

Desiree Valadares presents a reading list that explores "the law’s historical role in the constitution of space, place, the body, and various other modalities of belonging in the U.S."

"The focus lies primarily on integrating legal history texts into architectural scholarship to examine race (and its intersections) and to trace changing legal notions of property, territory, nationhood, and citizenship," explains Valaderes.

Reading recommendations on two themes, exclusion and segregation, follow.

The first theme, Exclusion, is concerned with the ways in which the Right of First Possession, Trespass Laws, Vagrancy Laws, Nuisance Laws, Zoning and Eviction excludes and “others” undesirable groups.

The second, Segregation, looks at Alien Land Acts, Zoning Laws, Restrictive Covenants, Historic Districting, Redlining, Utility Easements, and Right-of-Way isolates and divides space.

Full Story:

Race, Space, and the Law

Published on Tuesday, March 5, 2019 in Places Journal