Law school project finds slavery citations still being used today

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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March 3, 2025

By Corey Williams, AFRO

A postcard immortalizes activist singer Nina Simone’s analysis of how slavery continues to impact modern-day American life at a time when the 47th president and his compatriots are seeking to rewrite African-American–and thus, American–history. (Credit: Library of Congress/ Kennedy, Amos Paul, Jr., artist)

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — An 1842 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the kidnapping conviction of a White man who seized a Black family and forced them into slavery south of the Mason-Dixon line is still being cited in American jurisprudence, 160 years after enslaved people throughout the U.S. were freed.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania has been cited in 274 other rulings since then, according to the Citing Slavery Project at Michigan State University. They are among more than 7,000 direct citations of slavery-law precedents that continue to guide lawyers and judges, said the project’s director, law professor Justin Simard.

This research into the lasting impact of legal principles related to the ownership of other humans is a counterpoint to efforts by the Trump administration and elected officials in Republican-led states to remove references to America’s racial history and dictate what teachers can discuss in classrooms.

Explore the full story in the Afro article.

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