This review may interest some:
CHOICE
www.choice360.org
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Sociology
Adler, Jeffrey S. Murder in New Orleans: the creation of Jim Crow policing. Chicago, 2019. 256p index ISBN 9780226643311, $35.00; ISBN 9780226643458 ebook, contact publisher for price.
by Adler (Univ. of Florida) reads like the script for a documentary film. The statistical analysis of a data set of 2,118 murders committed in or around New Orleans between 1920 and 1945 is enlivened with "narrative portions of the Homicide Reports." Employing the methodology of "microhistory," Adler examines the institutionalized discrimination against the poor and direct racism by police officers, the media, and the general population in the context of expanding Jim Crow policing. Newspapers sensationalized some cases while neglecting the more common forms of homicide downplayed in police reports. New Orleans, in turn, experienced growing police brutality against African Americans and disproportionately higher murder convictions among this community. The murder rate rose sharply after World War I and then fell dramatically from the late 1930s onward, despite the Great Depression and the flouting of prohibition by city officials, supposedly because the population became more "mature" and jobless African American women became more dependent, among other alleged reasons. Missing from the explanation is the possible role of young men demobilized after the war but without the benefits of New Deal programs.
Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. --
B. Agozino, Virginia TechChoice Vol. 57, Issue 6
Feb 2020
© American Library Association. Contact permissions@ala-choice.org for permission to reproduce or redistribute.
Biko
No comments:
Post a Comment