As the Black activist Charles Lenox Remond complained as he testified against racial discrimination on Massachusetts railroads in 1842: “Color is made to obscure the brightest endowments, to degrade the fairest character, and to check the highest and most praiseworthy aspirations.”9 Antiblack laws construed all Black people as dangerous, threatening, or criminal. While white people benefited from the protection of the laws, Black people were presumed guilty simply by virtue of being Black.
