The Black Child-Savers

The Black Child-Savers elaborately details how the exclusionary sanctions of the juvenile justice system resulted in African American child and teenage offenders being incarcerated with adults and consigned to chain gangs and other exploitative labor regimes. With great insight, Geoff K. Ward documents the oppositional racial project pursued by the black child-savers movement and expertly lays the groundwork for the much-needed activism to chart a more promising future for delinquent and dependent African American youth. --V. P. Franklin University of California, Riverside In The Black Child Savers , Professor Ward tells a compelling, eye-opening story that has never been told before: the history of how our country has treated black children accused of crime, how the juvenile justice system evolved without black children in mind, and how the vestiges of this history persist in the form of the rampant disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system today. The Black Child Savers is a comprehensive, meticulously researched and eloquently written resource for scholars, teachers, community organizers, families of system-involved youth, attorneys, probation officers, judges, and anyone else who cares about racism in the juvenile justice system and how it came to be so entrenched. It is a major contribution on a missing chapter in juvenile justice. --Robin Walker Sterling University of Denver Ward offers a compelling account of the leaders of this movement, many of them African American clubwomen such as Josephine Ruffin and Frances Joseph-Gaudet. This is a story that has not been told before. . . . This glaring omission in the historical literature has now been addressed thanks to Ward's meticulous research. --Bryan Wagner Journal of American History The Black Child-Savers elaborately details how the exclusionary sanctions of the juvenile justice system resulted in African American child and teenage offenders being incarcerated with adults and consigned to chain gangs and other exploitative labor regimes. With great insight, Geoff K. Ward documents the oppositional racial project pursued by the black child-savers movement and expertly lays the groundwork for the much-needed activism to chart a more promising future for delinquent and dependent African American youth. --V. P. Franklin University of California, Riverside Geoff Ward helps lift the veil that has hiddensouthern penal practices from our national narrative of progressive criminal justice reforms. Black Child-Savers is essential to understanding the unfinished agenda of civil rights for youth of color in America's criminal justice systems. --Jonathan Simon author of Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass In The Black Child Savers, Professor Ward tells a compelling, eye-opening story that has never been told before: the history of how our country has treated black children accused of crime, how the juvenile justice system evolved without black children in mind, and how the vestiges of this history persist in the form of the rampant disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system today. The Black Child Savers is a comprehensive, meticulously researched and eloquently written resource for scholars, teachers, community organizers, families of system-involved youth, attorneys, probation officers, judges, and anyone else who cares about racism in the juvenile justice system and how it came to be so entrenched. It is a major contribution on a missing chapter in juvenile justice. --Robin Walker Sterling University of Denver Geoff Ward helps lift the veil that has hidden southern penal practices from our national narrative of progressive criminal justice reforms. Black Child-Savers is essential to understanding the unfinished agenda of civil rights for youth of color in America's criminal justice systems. --Jonathan Simon author of Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Underclass The Black Child-Savers elaborately details how the exclusionary sanctions of the juvenile justice system resulted in African American child and teenage offenders being incarcerated with adults and consigned to chain gangs and other exploitative labor regimes. With great insight, Geoff K. Ward documents the oppositional racial project pursued by the black child-savers movement and expertly lays the groundwork for the much-needed activism to chart a more promising future for delinquent and dependent African American youth. --V. P. Franklin University of California, Riverside Ward not only adds a much-needed African American perspective to the history of juvenile justice, he changes the way in which we think about the origins, parameters, and goals of juvenile justice. This book should be required reading for scholars across many fields, from criminology and law to modern American history. --Anthony M. Platt author of The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency In The Black Child Savers, Professor Ward tells a compelling, eye-opening story that has never been told before: the history of how our country has treated black children accused of crime, how the juvenile justice system evolved without black children in mind, and how the vestiges of this history persist in the form of the rampant disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system today. The Black Child Savers is a comprehensive, meticulously researched and eloquently written resource for scholars, teachers, community organizers, families of system-involved youth, attorneys, probation officers, judges, and anyone else who cares about racism in the juvenile justice system and how it came to be so entrenched. It is a major contribution on a missing chapter in juvenile justice. --Robin Walker Sterling University of Denver Ward not only adds a much-needed African American perspective to the history of juvenile justice, he changes the way in which we think about the origins, parameters, and goals of juvenile justice. This book should be required reading for scholars across many fields, from criminology and law to modern American history. --Anthony M. Platt author of The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency