Racism has been written into the United States' laws and entrenched in its institutions for much of its history. Native Americans weren't granted citizenship until 1924. Before the mid-1900s, students of color were pushed into segregated schools. And manystates maintained laws against interracial marriages until 1967. In the Race and American Law series, readers will look at how court cases and government actions have moved toward more equality among...

When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal sterilizations in California’s women’s prisons, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes -- from inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations -- primarily targeting women of color....

"A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China's repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In recent years, the People's Republic of China has rounded up as many as three million Uyghurs, placing them in what it calls "reeducation camps," facilities most of the world identifies as concentration camps....

A sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. From the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II, under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these "debts," prisoners were sold...

"DNA typing -- the analysis of a biological sample for a person's genetic signature -- has led to the unprecedented exoneration of hundreds of wrongfully convicted people. And every day we hear stories about how police used DNA to capture a dangerous rapist or killer. Reading these accounts, it is hard not to think of DNA typing as an unmitigated good. Who can argue with a technology that helps catch bad guys and correct law enforcement mistakes?...

"Black rookie cop Trevor "Finn" Finnegan aspires to become a top-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Police Department and fix a broken department. A fast-track promotion to detective in the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division puts him closer to achieving his goal. Four years later, calls for police accountability rule the headlines. The city is teeming with protests for racial justice. When the body of a murdered Black academy recruit is found in the...

A young, single mother of four is wrongly accused of selling drugs near a school and is offered a plea deal that would force her to admit to a crime she didn't commit. She challenges the laws of Texas when, instead of ruining her life with a conviction, she decides to sue the DA for racial discrimination in a case that changes her life as well as the laws of her state. Based on a true story.

"In 1966 in a small town in Louisiana, a 19-year-old black man named Gary Duncan pulled his car off the road to stop a fight. Duncan was arrested a few minutes later for the crime of putting his hand on the arm of a white child. Rather than accepting his fate, Duncan found Richard Sobol, a brilliant, 29-year-old lawyer from New York who was the only white attorney at "the most radical law firm" in New Orleans. Against them stood one of the most powerful...