Their Accomplices Wore Robes, The Supreme Court vs. Black America

Co-presented with KALW

A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America, Brando Simeo Starkey’s Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court aligned with enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Reconstruction Amendments: to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness. Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In conversation with KALW’s Sunni…