By Hands Now Known

Jim Crow's Legal Executioners

By: Margaret A. Burnham

Narrated by: Diana Blue

Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar.

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law?

In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period—and through to today.

Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

©2022 Margaret Burnham (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

a history that lives today

by hands now known rivals just mercy in capturing the stories behind the atrocities. well written and performed.

eyes opened

I have been awakened!

this book draws clear lines across our history and gives us an upclose look at the insidious nature and spread of Jim Crow. I am proud and happy America has changed. I could not endure it.

Good book....

It is always good to know the past struggles but at times I ask myself, will it empower me or make me more upset at the conditions then, now and perhaps into the future..... good book but at the end of the day, not much changes, the racism merely mutates to a new form..,

Shout out to....
Bro Panic
Dr Phil Valentine
Bro C. Freeman El
Dr Josef Ben-Jochannan
Amen Ra KamKam
Dr Khallid Muhammad
Dr Ann Brown
Dr Delbert Blair
Dr Timothy Owens Moore
Dr Malachi Z York
Dr Chancellor Williams
Jordan Maxwell
Dr Ivan Van Sertima
Richard D King MD
Rev Ray Hagins
Zoe Williams
Young Pharaoh
PapaDuck
Runoko Rashidi
Dr Walter Williams
Grand Sheik Taj Tarik Bey
Bill Donahue
Bobby Hemmitt
Cheikh Anta Diop
Shahrazad Ali
Gabriel Oyibo
Kwame Ture
Amos Wilson
Marimba Ani

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking read but so necessary
Not talked about enough not ancient History like some would like you to believe

Great Story--Use Consistent Pronunciation Please

Great story. Definitely worth the read. Unfortunately, the reader pronounces several words differently in different places throughout the work.

Important Chronicle and Analysis

I was riveted by this important book, and listened to all of it in just a few sessions. It provides much needed documentation and analysis of marginalized histories of African-Americans’ persistently unjust interactions with dominant American institutions, from the late 19C to the present. I am grateful that this author’s careful work is part of the public record. I hope it will move every day people to reimagine our collective present and future.

Narrator is sub par.

The story is timely and very interesting but it lacked a controlled theme. It narrator was subpar. She was clearly jus reading words. No performance at all.

I loved the content and disliked the reader

After 5 chapters, I gave up trying to struggle through this audio rendition. The narrator emphasizes articles (the, it, and) and reads in choppy short spurts. Too bad. I would like to finish on this road trip, but I will buy the book and finish it later.

Good story

The info was great. The performance not so much. There are so many mispronunciations. I wish that would have been discovered through editing since some are quite distracting.