White Power

“American slavery was not just an economic system. It was a method of social control that created a brutal racial hierarchy. Gautham Rao’s meticulous research and clear-eyed analysis demonstrates that the historical will to dominate Black people is still with us today with devastating consequences.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth

“With deep research, clear thinking, and vivid writing, Gautham Rao uncovers the long, tangled history of race, slavery, and policing. In the collective duty of white people to enforce slavery, he detects the source of our enduring curse of racial inequality.”—Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804

“Written by one of the most innovative legal historians of our time, White Power is as compelling as it is timely. Gautham Rao plumbs the archive to illuminate the intertwined histories of slavery, policing, and white supremacy in the United States.”—Justene Hill Edwards, author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank

“Rao has crafted a history of slavery and law that stretches beyond the local or regional, illuminating the long national history of slavery and policing. White Power expertly shows how everyday people and seemingly august institutions were shaped by and bent to the fears and desires of the slaveholding oligarchy, profoundly shaping jurisprudence and practical governance at the local and national level for more than two centuries.”—Ryan A. Quintana, author of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina

“A sweeping and strikingly counterintuitive argument that the colonial and antebellum system of white power did not end with emancipation, but was reconfigured afterward with the same motivation and intent. Rao’s longitudinal approach presents a significant contribution to scholarship on the origins of modern policing.”—Stephanie McCurry, author of Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South

Gautham Rao is associate professor of history at American University in Washington, DC, and Editor-in-Chief of Law and History Review.

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