ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how courts have responded to those injustices. Acts of horrific racial domestic terrorism perpetrated by whites against persons of color were frequent in the United States from the 1870s until the late 1940s. Black men, women and children were disproportionately the victims of racial domestic terrorism, especially lynchings. In a recent report on lynching in America, the Equal Justice Initiative found that racial terror lynchings were much more prevalent in America than previously reported. Black men, women and children were disproportionately the victims of racial domestic terrorism, especially lynchings. Persons of Chinese and Mexican ancestry were also victims of racial terror murder and lynchings. The largest mass lynching in the United States occurred in Los Angeles when twenty-one Chinese were killed, fifteen by lynching, in what is known as the Chinese Massacre of 1871. A notorious lynching case facilitated an unprecedented response by Supreme Court which paved the way toward a due process revolution in criminal cases.
