| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Gail Williams O'Brien. The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South. (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1999. Pp. xiii, 334. Cloth $45.00, paper $18.95.

On February 25, 1946, an argument over repair of a radio escalated into a fight between a white man and a black man in Columbia, Tennessee. The Caucasian wound up in the hospital, and there was talk of a lynching. It did not happen because the sheriff let an African-American businessman whisk the intended victim out of town. Blacks armed themselves and fired on and wounded policemen who entered their business district. Later the Tennessee Highway Patrol stormed into that area, making arrests, abusing citizens, and looting. Surprisingly, all-white juries acquitted twenty-four of the twenty-seven black men who were tried for their alleged involvement in what became known nationally as the "Columbia, Tennessee, race riot." 1

Gail Williams O'Brien's book is a well-written, well-researched, and extremely thought-provoking account of this incident. Explaining the seemingly inexplicable acquittals in the Columbia cases is a formidable challenge, which O'Brien meets with superb analysis of the social composition of the community from which the jury was drawn. Her book, however, is overly ambitious. She has sought to use the Columbia case as a vehicle for explaining the impact of World War II on race relations in the South, the decline of white racist violence, the militance of some segments of the African-American community, and the impact of politics on southern law enforcement. This is a heavier load than it can bear. . . .

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