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72 Stan. L. Rev. 1467 (2020)
"Racial and Religious Democracy": Identity and Equality in Midcentury Courts

handle is hein.journals/stflr72 and id is 1511 raw text is: ARTICLE
Racial and Religious Democracy:
Identity and Equality
in Midcentury Courts
Elizabeth D. Katz*
Abstract. In our current political moment, discrimination against minority racial and
religious groups routinely makes headlines. Though some press coverage of these
occurrences acknowledges parallels and links between racial and religious prejudices,
these intersections remain undertheorized in legal and historical scholarship. Because
scholars typically study race and religion separately, they have overlooked the legal
significance of how race and religion coexist in both perpetrators and victims of
discrimination. By contrast, this Article demonstrates that the intersection of racial and
religious identities has meaningfully influenced legal and political efforts to achieve
equality.
Drawing from extensive archival research, this Article unearths forgotten yet formative
connections between racial and religious antidiscrimination efforts, at the local through
federal levels, from the 1930s through the 1950s. To examine these links, this account
* Associate Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis. For helpful comments
and conversations, I thank Gregory Ablavsky, Susan Appleton, Tomiko Brown-Nagin,
Kevin Collins, Nancy F. Cott, Danielle D'Onfro, Daniel Epps, Edwin M. Epstein, Trudy
Festinger, Estelle B. Freedman, Trevor Gardner, Smita Ghosh, Robert W. Gordon, David
A. Hollinger, Darren Hutchinson, John Inazu, Howard H. Kaufman, Zachary D. Kaufman,
Amalia D. Kessler, Pauline Kim, Michael Klarman, David Lieberman, Kenneth W. Mack,
Wilson Parker, Kyle Rozema, Debra Bradley Ruder, Rachel Sachs, Mark Storslee, Brian
Tamanaha, Steve Tulin, Michael Wald, and participants in the Washington University
in St. Louis School of Law Faculty Workshop, the Stanford Law and History Workshop,
the Berkeley Law and History Workshop, Stanford Law School's Fellows Workshop, the
Stanford University Department of History's U.S. History Workshop, the Southeastern
Law School's Junior/Senior Faculty Workshop, the American Constitution Society's
Junior Scholars Public Law Workshop, and panels at the annual meetings of the
American Society for Legal History and the Law and Society Association. Research for
this Article was generously supported by the Stanford Center for Law and History, the
American Society for Legal History's William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Fellowship,
and Harvard University's Center for American Political Studies Dissertation Fellowship
and Seed Grant. Finally, I am extremely grateful to Sam Lazerwitz, Ethan Amaker, and
the other editors of the Stanford Law Review for their thoughtful suggestions and careful
editing.

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