Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System

A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America

Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, ...