Description: 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.
Brief description: ROBERT J. COTTROLL 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).
Review Quotes:
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"