SolidarityEconomy.net

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In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family’s home and receives probation. A black one shoves a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it `a signal to black folks.’

By Howard Witt, Tribune senior correspondent

PARIS, Texas — The public fairgrounds in this small east Texas town look ordinary enough, like so many other well-worn county fair sites across the nation. Unless you know the history of the place.

There are no plaques or markers to denote it, but several of the most notorious public lynchings of black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds, where thousands of white spectators would (more…)

Reviewed by Joseph Matthews

For those Guild members who know Paul Harris from his time as President of the NLG, the fact that he has written a book about characters with deep political convictions will come as no surprise. The same is true for those who know him as co-founder of the San Francisco Community Law Collective, or as the teacher of “guerrilla law” in his guise as Charles Garry Professor of Law at New College in San Francisco. That this novel presents a convincing and powerful historical account of the collision of radical politics and the “justice” system will also make perfect sense to anyone who has read his earlier non-fiction exposition of guerrilla law in action, Black Rage Confronts the Law (NYU Press, 1997). (more…)