'By Hands Now Known' by Margaret A. Burnham
Lynching was only the sharp tip of the iceberg. Margaret A. Burnham collected a data base of white-on-Black violence from 1920 through 1960, and while the author points out that Jim Crow existed across the U.S., the South was where the “chronic, unpredictable violence that loomed over everyday Black life” was most pervasive. The violence was sometimes conducted by police; at least as often, it was white citizens who felt licensed to enforce unfair labor practices and bigoted norms that extended beyond the letter of the discriminatory laws.
A director of Northeastern University’s Restorative Justice Project and a member of the federal Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, Burnham is also interested in the refusal of federal courts to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments granting citizenship and civil rights to anyone born in the U.S., and the halting efforts by the Justice Department, starting under Franklin Roosevelt, to protect those rights against Southern authorities determined to uphold white supremacy.
By Hands Now Known also covers the almost forgotten effort by Southern Blacks to protest the abuses they suffered. Occasionally, the publicity they generated had results. In 1941 a Birmingham cop who killed a young Black man for laughing was dismissed from the force. But this was unusual.
