From a brilliant young legal scholar comes this sweeping history of American ideas of belonging and citizenship,
told through the stories of fourteen legal cases that helped to shape our nation.
Spanning three centuries, Black Trials details the legal challenges and struggles that helped define the ever-shifting
identity of blacks in America. From the well-known cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and the Clarence Thomas confirmation
hearings to the more obscure trial of Joseph Hanno, an eighteenth-century free black man accused of murdering his
wife and bringing smallpox to Boston, Weiner recounts the essential dramas of American identity�illuminating where
our conception of minority rights has come from and where it might go. Significant and enthralling, these are the
cases that forced the courts and the country to reconsider what it means to be black in America, and Mark Weiner
illuminates their lasting importance for our society.