What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America

by Ariela J. Gross

Is race something we know when we see it? In 1857, Alexina Morrison, a slave in Louisiana, ran away from her master and surrendered herself to the parish jail for protection. Blue-eyed and blond, Morrison successfully convinced white society that she was one of them. When she sued for her freedom, witnesses assured the jury that she was white, and that they would have known if she had a drop of African blood. Morrison's court trial--and many others over the last 150 years--involved high stakes: freedom, property, and civil rights. And they all turned on the question of racial identity.

Over the past two centuries, individuals and groups (among them Mexican Americans, Indians, Asian immigrants, and Melungeons) have fought to establish their whiteness in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms, administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Morrison's case, these trials have often turned less on legal definitions of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way people presented themselves to society and demonstrated their moral and civic character.

Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Ariela Gross's book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society. This book reminds us that the imaginary connection between racial identity and fitness for citizenship remains potent today and continues to impede racial justice and equality.

Genres: Nonfiction, American History, Race

368 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2008

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Blood Won't Tell is a really solid work of history which analyzes how race was determined through the American legal system. Gross' writing provides enough broad context to understand how specific race trials played out, and does an exceptional job of connecting those trials to the evolution of racial theory in America. The conclusion, chapter two, and chapter seven are particular standouts from the book. This is a good piece of work for those interested in legal history and civil rights history, and is a must-read for those interested in the history of race and racial ideology in America.

[Margaret Sankey · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a legal scholar, a study of how American law determined racial classification from local juries, state legislatures and the supreme court--beginning with 1820s cases in which local juries assigned "whiteness" according to the performance (for men, voting and militia muster; for women, virtue and fragility, and "good hair") of 19th century ideals, Reconstruction pressure on Native peoples to exclude African-Americans from allotment, creating a vicious and long-lasting situation in Oklahoma and amongst the Lumbee and Seminole, the legal aftermath of the 1848 Hawai'ian Land Separation and 1893 annexation, hurried moves to independence for the Philippines to cut off immigration from there to the US, California's willingness to grant individual Japanese and Indian "Hindoos" citizenship through equitable estoppel but not whole groups, Norris v. Alabama's complicated application of jury selection rules to Hispanics in Hernandez v. Texas and the current state of blood quantum as held in Rice v. Cayetano.

[Lauriann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should have to read this book. This was one of the most compelling looks at race I have ever read. Gross looks at court cases where race is on the line from the ante-bellum period to now to show that race is not something that came to us naturally but something that has been made and remade through the courts and communities. People aren't white or black; they perform "white" or "black." This account of race in America truly was so fascinating.