A Degraded Caste of Society: Unequal Protection of the Law as a Badge of Slavery (2024)
A Degraded Caste of Society traces the origins of twenty-first-century cases of interracial violence to the separate and unequal protection principles of the criminal law of enslavement in the southern United States. Andrew T. Fede explains how antebellum appellate court opinions and statutes, when read in a context that includes newspaper articles and trial court and census records, extended this doctrine to the South’s free Black people, consigning them to what South Carolina justice John Belton O’Neall called “a degraded caste of society,” in which they were “in no respect, on a perfect equality with the white man.”
Read a review of A Degraded Caste of Society: Unequal Protection of the Law as a Badge of Slavery, in the February 2026 edition of The Journal of Southern History, written by Lafayette College History Professor Deborah A. Rosen, which states that the book presents its “argument in a systematic, well-organized, clear, and persuasive manner.” She notes the book’s relevance to modern discussions on racial justice, stating that Fede “explores how southern laws legitimized violence against Black people, particularly free Blacks, expanding on his previous work and examining pivotal legal cases that helped establish unequal protection in the law. His research offers a compelling case that this ‘badge of slavery’ persists today in the form of racially motivated violence.”
You can read the full review here.
Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and the Atlantic World (2017)
Andrew T. Fede cites a wide range of cases—across time, place, and circumstance—to illuminate legal, judicial, and other complexities surrounding this regrettably common occurrence.
READ REVIEWS FROM: Project Muse and Louisiana State University.
AN EXCERPT from “Black Perspectives”.
Roadblocks to Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in the United States South (2012)
This new book by Andrew Fede considers the law of freedom suits and manumission from the point-of-view of legal procedure, evidence rules, damage awards, and trial practice.
READ REVIEWS FROM: ProQuest and Taylor and Francis Online.
People Without Rights (Routledge Revivals): An Interpretation of the Fundamentals of the Law of Slavery in the U.S. South (2012)
First published in September 1992, the book traces the nature and development of the fundamental legal relationships among slaves, masters, and third parties.
READ REVIEWS FROM: The Journal of Southern History