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Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System
A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.
688 pages, Hardcover
First published June 3, 2025
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585 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 18, 2025
Been slowly working my way through this book. Just oof! While I did find it hard to follow at times (I’m sure it was me) I fully enjoyed this book. I went down so many rabbit holes.
December 27, 2025
thank you to double day books for the review copy!
i’m going to be honest - i was so grateful when i finally finished this book. reading this felt like a grueling and exhausting marathon that was ~mostly~ worth it. don’t get me wrong it is an extremely important subject matter and was incredibly informative. but it is relentlessly detailed and dense and i would just get lost in what was going on
but all that being said, this is an important examination of how the supreme court has maintained the racial caste system in america by undermining the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments
i’m going to be honest - i was so grateful when i finally finished this book. reading this felt like a grueling and exhausting marathon that was ~mostly~ worth it. don’t get me wrong it is an extremely important subject matter and was incredibly informative. but it is relentlessly detailed and dense and i would just get lost in what was going on
but all that being said, this is an important examination of how the supreme court has maintained the racial caste system in america by undermining the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments
August 16, 2025
Very good and detailed. Loved the narration but a structure that allows you to better jump around would be nice.
August 10, 2025
This is a tough book to review.
On one hand, it is probably the most comprehensive look at the way white supremacy has been embedded in constitutional jurisprudence, and how the emancipatory promises of the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th) and the legislation of its era were dismantled by white supremacists on the Supreme Court. Thus, as a work of critical legal history, it's excellent.
On an intellectual and political analysis level, however, I have several significant critiques of this book.
I want to start off by noting the positives. Starkey has done an amazing amount of research for this book, and very effectively lays out the contexts that drove the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, as well as the backlash they've faced for the last 160+ years in the courts. While I was generally familiar with many of the famous 14th & 15th Amendment cases (Cruikshank v US, the Slaughterhouse cases, the Civil Rights Cases, Plessy v Ferguson, Williams v Mississippi, Bakke v Regents of the University of California, Shelby County v Holder), there were many more covered in this book, in incredible detail that effectively contextualize each result and show how they are all stitched together into a web of white supremacy. I didn't know, for instance, what Plessy v Ferguson was about more than just establishing "separate but equal" as court doctrine - it was about Afro-Creole folks in Louisiana who chose to actively violate a law mandating segregated rail cars (a la Rosa Parks) hoping the SCOTUS would correctly identify that as a violation of the 14th Amendment. There are a lot of moments like that which I was not aware of that this book did a wonderful job outlining and ensuring are not forgotten.
On a deeper level, though, the intellectual and philosophical project this book appears to be undertaking has many flaws.
First, Starkey places *a lot* of faith in the Reconstruction Amendments as the central tool for dismantling the structures of white supremacy - he literally refers to them collectively as The Trinity. He correctly identifies that many of the folks who helped pass these amendments believed in the most emancipatory interpretation of these amendments possible, and that the vagueness of these amendments (most notably of the 14th) was a product of political concessions of their time necessary to get them through. Nevertheless, if we are to take the view that the Constitution must be understood via the lens of the people who wrote it, the views of the authors of the Reconstruction Amendments was relatively clear. The unfortunate problem is though, they did have to write the 14th Amendment vaguely - which is precisely what its opponents have used to undermine every political effort to challenge white supremacy on a structural level. I like the Reconstruction Amendments a lot, and I can accept the idea that legal scholars and judges should use them as tools for fighting for justice. But frankly, their vagueness is a problem - so perhaps the bigger task is not "correctly interpreting 'The Trinity'", but instead, I don't know, building a political movement that can pass new more clear radical amendments?
This brings me to my second critique - Starkey really wants to draw on the longstanding analysis of American racial capitalism as a form of a racialized caste system for this book - it's in the title and through the book (the progressives are now called 'caste abolitionists' and the conservatives 'caste preservationists'). Now, he does a significantly better job than Isabel Wilkerson did in her absolutely terrible book, but he still doesn't think about this in the most effective way and it undermines what he's trying to do here. To put it simply, a caste system segregates both the work and the workers - specific people's job is to do specific work within society. The work that is undervalued is performed by the people who are undervalued - and those people are never supposed to do any other kind of work. I am a very ardent advocate of describing America as operating in a racial caste system, and I think the legal battles this book talks about demonstrate that perfectly. But Starkey doesn't really grapple with what that means on a political economic level and why that explains the ideology undergirding white supremacy. The fundamental problem "caste abolitionism" presents in an American context is it would make Black people the social equals of white people. It would mean that Black people could live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, enter the same professions, and exist in the same social contexts as white people. The function of the American caste system is precisely to stop that from happening, and every attempt to challenge that (targeted investments, social equality, affirmative action, integrated housing and education) will be viciously and aggressively combatted by the 'caste preservationists'.
This is not a problem of incorrect interpretation, this is a problem of power. There is no way to "correctly interpret" our way out of the American racial caste system. The Reconstruction Amendments are good, but they are frankly insufficient for this moment. If you are going to argue a legal solution, the solution (as argued by Aziz Rana in his giant tome of a book about the Constitution, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them), is building a political coalition strong enough to rewrite the constitution to deliver the radical changes we need to destroy the American caste system.
This book is trying something really bold and powerful, and I have to respect that. But its flaws limit its effectiveness and risk leaving readers without a clear sense of what to do about the crisis it effectively highlights.
On one hand, it is probably the most comprehensive look at the way white supremacy has been embedded in constitutional jurisprudence, and how the emancipatory promises of the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th) and the legislation of its era were dismantled by white supremacists on the Supreme Court. Thus, as a work of critical legal history, it's excellent.
On an intellectual and political analysis level, however, I have several significant critiques of this book.
I want to start off by noting the positives. Starkey has done an amazing amount of research for this book, and very effectively lays out the contexts that drove the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, as well as the backlash they've faced for the last 160+ years in the courts. While I was generally familiar with many of the famous 14th & 15th Amendment cases (Cruikshank v US, the Slaughterhouse cases, the Civil Rights Cases, Plessy v Ferguson, Williams v Mississippi, Bakke v Regents of the University of California, Shelby County v Holder), there were many more covered in this book, in incredible detail that effectively contextualize each result and show how they are all stitched together into a web of white supremacy. I didn't know, for instance, what Plessy v Ferguson was about more than just establishing "separate but equal" as court doctrine - it was about Afro-Creole folks in Louisiana who chose to actively violate a law mandating segregated rail cars (a la Rosa Parks) hoping the SCOTUS would correctly identify that as a violation of the 14th Amendment. There are a lot of moments like that which I was not aware of that this book did a wonderful job outlining and ensuring are not forgotten.
On a deeper level, though, the intellectual and philosophical project this book appears to be undertaking has many flaws.
First, Starkey places *a lot* of faith in the Reconstruction Amendments as the central tool for dismantling the structures of white supremacy - he literally refers to them collectively as The Trinity. He correctly identifies that many of the folks who helped pass these amendments believed in the most emancipatory interpretation of these amendments possible, and that the vagueness of these amendments (most notably of the 14th) was a product of political concessions of their time necessary to get them through. Nevertheless, if we are to take the view that the Constitution must be understood via the lens of the people who wrote it, the views of the authors of the Reconstruction Amendments was relatively clear. The unfortunate problem is though, they did have to write the 14th Amendment vaguely - which is precisely what its opponents have used to undermine every political effort to challenge white supremacy on a structural level. I like the Reconstruction Amendments a lot, and I can accept the idea that legal scholars and judges should use them as tools for fighting for justice. But frankly, their vagueness is a problem - so perhaps the bigger task is not "correctly interpreting 'The Trinity'", but instead, I don't know, building a political movement that can pass new more clear radical amendments?
This brings me to my second critique - Starkey really wants to draw on the longstanding analysis of American racial capitalism as a form of a racialized caste system for this book - it's in the title and through the book (the progressives are now called 'caste abolitionists' and the conservatives 'caste preservationists'). Now, he does a significantly better job than Isabel Wilkerson did in her absolutely terrible book, but he still doesn't think about this in the most effective way and it undermines what he's trying to do here. To put it simply, a caste system segregates both the work and the workers - specific people's job is to do specific work within society. The work that is undervalued is performed by the people who are undervalued - and those people are never supposed to do any other kind of work. I am a very ardent advocate of describing America as operating in a racial caste system, and I think the legal battles this book talks about demonstrate that perfectly. But Starkey doesn't really grapple with what that means on a political economic level and why that explains the ideology undergirding white supremacy. The fundamental problem "caste abolitionism" presents in an American context is it would make Black people the social equals of white people. It would mean that Black people could live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, enter the same professions, and exist in the same social contexts as white people. The function of the American caste system is precisely to stop that from happening, and every attempt to challenge that (targeted investments, social equality, affirmative action, integrated housing and education) will be viciously and aggressively combatted by the 'caste preservationists'.
This is not a problem of incorrect interpretation, this is a problem of power. There is no way to "correctly interpret" our way out of the American racial caste system. The Reconstruction Amendments are good, but they are frankly insufficient for this moment. If you are going to argue a legal solution, the solution (as argued by Aziz Rana in his giant tome of a book about the Constitution, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them), is building a political coalition strong enough to rewrite the constitution to deliver the radical changes we need to destroy the American caste system.
This book is trying something really bold and powerful, and I have to respect that. But its flaws limit its effectiveness and risk leaving readers without a clear sense of what to do about the crisis it effectively highlights.
July 23, 2025
While I firmly believe that this is an extremely important book [it shows how the Supreme Court has maintained a strict caste system of Black peoples in America, by seriously undermining the 13th - 15th amendments, and really shows how we got to where we are today with how the court is ruling on immigration and against Black leaders ], and I [who knew/knows little about the Supreme Court and its {often problematic - Clarence Thomas anyone?} justices outside of RBG ] learned quite a bit [and I recommend this book highly to serious history lovers and people who have some knowledge of the Supreme Court ], I must say this; this book is
EXTREMELY
dense, extremely detailed [there are sections that are taken from court rulings that are played out verbatim ], with a ton of minutiae that often gets lost in the dialogue [and often made me just lose track of just what was being said ], three-hour chapters [when one is listening to the audiobook - thankfully, it is amazingly narrated by Kevin R. Free and I highly recommend him; narrating this audiobook could not have been easy ] that are just a nightmare for someone with OCD [I am unable to just stop in the middle of a chapter, and even if I could have, I would not recommend that here as it is easy enough to lose the plot when you are reading the WHOLE chapter, I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to pick up the thread of thought after having stopped in the middle of it ] and well as being seriously overwhelming in the amount of information you are being fed, and the book overall was a bit above my pay-grade [due to my woeful lack of knowledge about the Supreme Court ], and I need to be honest here, by the end, I breathed a huge breath and realized I was very grateful it was finally finished.
I was invited to read/review this by the publisher [Doubleday Books/Doubleday] and I thank them, the author, and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I was invited to read/review this by the publisher [Doubleday Books/Doubleday] and I thank them, the author, and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 16, 2025
This might be my book of the year. A tour de force history of the Reconstruction Amendments and the Supreme Court's long history of failure of living up to the intent, let alone the wording, of those Amendments. It was jarring to watch the Court, today, review another Voting Rights Act case in the midst of reading this book and go, yep, they're doing it again, and a few pages later, yep, they're trying to do that again. Only by abolishing the caste distinctions still prevalent in America can this history be unwritten and rewritten once more.
December 2, 2025
This book is huge, dense and jam packed with information that everyone needs to read to understand American history.
July 10, 2025
Thoroughly researched, eye opening (for me), and detailed. Two of those compliments are likely to be interpreted as negative by some.
It's a long book. It has an important tale to tell. It is dealing with law. Two of those traits also are likely to be off-putting.
But people should read this book. Absolutely recommended for those interested in why things got so bad for Black Americans after the Civil War. The book (and history) is so damning of Whites and tells so much about how flawed our court system is (meaning how easily it can be corrupted or influenced or biased -- or all three).
Americans are living at a time with another racist, elitist majority in the Supreme Court. God help us if we can't right these current wrongs faster than it has taken to correct mistakes described in Their Accomplices Wore Robes.
I hope this one is nominated for several awards to make more people aware of it. Published a month ago and only one other written review? Our collective (white) shame persists.
It's a long book. It has an important tale to tell. It is dealing with law. Two of those traits also are likely to be off-putting.
But people should read this book. Absolutely recommended for those interested in why things got so bad for Black Americans after the Civil War. The book (and history) is so damning of Whites and tells so much about how flawed our court system is (meaning how easily it can be corrupted or influenced or biased -- or all three).
Americans are living at a time with another racist, elitist majority in the Supreme Court. God help us if we can't right these current wrongs faster than it has taken to correct mistakes described in Their Accomplices Wore Robes.
I hope this one is nominated for several awards to make more people aware of it. Published a month ago and only one other written review? Our collective (white) shame persists.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews