An Interview with Michael J. Klarman on Race and American Legal History

Abstract

May/June 2008 Historically Speaking 39 An Interview with Michael J. Klarman on Race and American Legal History Conducted by RandallJ. Stephens MICHAEL J. KLARMAN IS A LEADING EXPERT ON RACE andcivilrights in UnitedStates history. Aftergraduatingfrom law schoolatStanford University, he clerkedforJudge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. KJarman, aprofessor of history and law at the University of Virginia, willsoon bejoining thefaculty atHarvardLaw School. He is the author of a number of landmark articles and books. His FromJim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and die Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004) won the 2005 BancroftPri^e. Hismost recentwork, Unfinished Business : Racial Equality in American History (Oxford University Press, 2007), reveals the kng, unevenpath to a morejust society. Historically Speaking associate editor RandallStephens spoke with Klarman recently about his work on race andhw in American history. Randall Stephens: Why did you write Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History? Michael J. Klarman: The answer to this one is easy but not very interesting. I 'was asked to contribute the volume on race to an Oxford University Press series on inalienable rights. I believe they asked me because I had recendy published , FromJim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Strugglefor Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004). That larger volume grew out of twenty years of reading, writing, and teaching about race and the Constitution in American history. I think I first got interested in that subject because every teacher of Constitutional Law has to make peace with Brown v. Boardof Education . By that I mean, how important was that decision to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s? and why was the decision right? (everyone agrees today that it was right, though the justices who decided it in 1954 had a devil of a time figuring out why school segregation was unconstitutional). Stephens: In Unfinished Business you remark: "At first glance the history of American race relations appears to be one of slow, but inevitable progress" (4). Could you explain what you mean by that? Klarman: I think most people buy the view that we started out with slavery, then we abolished slavery and substituted that with Jim Crow, then Jim Crow was gradually dismanded, and today we've accomplished something nearer to the ideal stated in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." That trajectory suggests ineluctable progress. But the actual history is more complicated. Slavery was much more on the defensive in the Soudi in 1780 than in 1820. Northern blacks were probably better treated—at least legally—in 1800 dian in 1 860. And African Americans in the Soudi were surely better off in terms of political and civil South Carolina representative Robert B. Elliott's famous speech in favor of the Civil Rights Act, delivered in the House of Representatives on January 6, 1874, is memorialized here. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number , LC-DIG-pga-02595]. rights in 1870 than diey were in 1900. There have been many instances in American history of racial retrogression—of things getting worse for African Americans and other racial minorities, rather than progressively getting better. Stephens: Most of your book covers the period before Brown vs Topeka. Why? What kind of picture do we get of the civil rights struggle when we look at the decades before the 1950s and 1960s? Klarman: Again, I was asked to write a book about race in American history, not a book about the civil rights movement. Still, I doubt one can ever understand die present without understanding how we got there. For example, only someone who understands the history of race in the 20th century can appreciate why Barack Obama's pastor might have said some of die things he said about America, and why a great many African Americans agree with his words. Stephens: Recently, a number of popular history books have focused the reading public's attention on the post-Civil War era. Why were the rights of African Americans being chipped away in the decades following Reconstruction? How does that era shape the larger story of American history? Klarman: That...