The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere

A Book Talk by Robert Cottrol '71, '78 PhD 

Monday, February 11, 2013

6:30 p.m. 

City Club of Washington

555 Thirteenth Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 

Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere.

Robert J. Cottrol '71, '78 PhD is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and Professor of History and Sociology at the George Washington University. He has lectured extensively on U.S. law at universities in Argentina and Brazil. His books include The Afro-Yankees: Providence’s Black Community in the Antebellum Era and Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution (coauthored with Raymond T. Diamond and Leland B. Ware).

“Cottrol’s well-written book is a brilliant explication of the comparative treatment of persons of African ancestry in the western world. This is a must-read for those interested in the larger context of the black experience in the Western Hemisphere.”
—Davison M. Douglas, author of Jim Crow Moves North: The Battle over Northern School Segregation, 1865–1954

“This book is an extremely important, groundbreaking work of comparative synthesis that will be a must-read for students of race in the United States as well as in Latin America. It will be the definitive book on the comparative history of race and law in the Americas.”
—Ariela Gross, author of What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America

$20: Yale Club and City Club Members 

$25: All others 

The evening will include a reception. 

This event is co-sponsored by the City Club of Washington. 

Register HERE! City Club Members use code YC021113

For more ifnormation, please click this link: http://ycwd.memberclicks.net/index.php?option=com_mc&view=mc&mcid=72&eventId=376070