In January 1932, two white women--Agnes Boeing Ilsley and Mina Buckner--were murdered in Ilsley's home in rural Middleburg, Virginia. Suspicion of who the murderer was settled on George Crawford, an African American man who was sometimes employed by Mrs. Ilsley to do various jobs, including serving as her chauffeur (Virginia Circuit Court 1933,…

In 1955, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church called for the racial desegregation of Episcopal institutions: parishes, seminaries, and schools. The study of Episcopal school desegregation reveals a fundamental paradox: Episcopal theology promoted desegregation but "white flight" spurred Episcopal school growth. The question of…

The cases analyzed in this essay exemplify both the influence of the sexual revolution and the conservative backlash against it. Topics that were once considered obscene were now seen as educational. Without this greater openness, none of these court cases would have been possible. In fact, people fighting against censorship and repression…

During the aftermath of the First Red Scare in the 1930s and during the early stages of the Cold War in the 1940s, the United States engaged in a great national effort to preserve and protect its capitalist system from international rival--the communist Soviet Union. In the American South, states such as Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama faced a…