The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice

During the Progressive Era, a rehabilitative agenda took hold of American juvenile justice, materializing as a citizen-and-state-building project and mirroring the unequal racial politics of American democracy itself. Alongside this liberal "manufactory of citizens,” a parallel structure was enacted: a Jim Crow juvenile justice system that endured across the nation for most of the twentieth century.

In The Black Child Savers, the first study of the rise and fall of Jim Crow juvenile justice...