"This blisteringly candid discussion of the American dilemma in the age of Trump brings together the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and death penalty lawyer, and a star professor for an honest conversation the country desperately needs to hear. Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these leading lights of the legal profession and the fight for racial justice talk about the importance of reclaiming the racial narrative and keeping our eyes on the horizon as we work for justice in an unjust time. Covering topics as varied as "the commonality of pain," "when lawyers are heroes," and the concept of an "equality dividend" that is due to people of color for helping America brand itself internationally as a country of diversity and acceptance, Ifill, Lynch, Stevenson, and Thompson also explore topics such as "when did 'public' become a dirty word" (hint, it has something to do with serving people of color), "you know what Jeff Sessions is going to say," and "what it means to be a civil rights lawyer in the age of Trump." Building on Stevenson's hugely successful Just Mercy, Lynch's national platform at the Justice Department, Ifill's role as one of the leading defenders of civil rights in the country, and the occasion of Thompson's launch of a new center on race, inequality, and the law at the NYU School of Law, A Perilous Path will speak loudly and clearly to everyone concerned about America's perpetual fault line."--Amazon.com.

"American jurisprudence and law have profoundly shaped defined and constrained the lives of Black people for over 400 years. Racial inequality has extremely deep roots in American society and our Constitution statutes court cases and regulations not only bear witness to this but are often the source of it. This timeline provides an overview of some of these laws beginning with the first known case marking the legal difference between Africans and Europeans in 1640 in Virginia and continuing with laws recently introduced in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. While not exhaustive the timeline focuses on a number of key legal events and actions that have structured and systematized racism in America."