Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The use of defamation law to reinforce privately held class-based animus traces back at least to the eighteenth century. In 1791, South Carolina’s court of last resort held that falsely describing an individual as a mulatto was actionable “because, if true, the [plaintiff] would be deprived of all civil rights.” False imputations that white persons were nonwhite or otherwise racially “impure” remained actionable in parts of the United States well into the twentieth century, particularly across the South. In 1957, South Carolina, for example, reaffirmed the precedent set in 1791. In Bowen v. Independent Publishing Co., the South Carolina Supreme Court held that allegations of racial impurity remained per se defamatory because, in light of the “social habits and customs deep-rooted in this State, such publication [alleging nonwhite lineage] is calculated to affect [one’s] standing in society and to injure [one] in the estimation of [one’s] friends and acquaintances.” Bowen and other decisions like it used the judicial arm of the state to reinforce Jim Crow under the guise of “neutrally applied” common law. By sanctioning these causes of action, the state reinforced notions of white supremacy and “affirmed the honor of whites by authoritatively denying status to blacks.”

Anthony Michael Kreis, “Lawrence Meets Libel: Squaring Constitutional Norms with Sexual-Orientation Defamation,” The Yale Law Journal Online, Volume 122, Issue 2 (November 2012):125-141. http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/lawrence-meets-libel-squaring-constitutional-norms-with-sexual-orientation-defamation.

The ‘Human Computer’ Behind the Moon Landing Was a Black Woman

Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2016-04-11 01:50Z by Steven

The ‘Human Computer’ Behind the Moon Landing Was a Black Woman

The Daily Beast
2016-04-07

Nathan Place

Image of Katherine Johnson at NASA Langley Research Center in 1971.

In an age of racism and sexism, Katherine Johnson broke both barriers at NASA.

She calculated the trajectory of man’s first trip to the moon, and was such an accurate mathematician that John Glenn asked her to double-check NASA’s computers. To top it off, she did it all as a black woman in the 1950s and ’60s, when women at NASA were not even invited to meetings.

And you’ve probably never heard of her.

Meet Katherine Johnson, the African-American woman who earned the nickname “the human computer” at NASA during its space race golden age…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Hidden Figures, Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, Katherine Johnson, NASA, Nathan Place, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The Daily Beast

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Mixed Race Studies

The ‘Human Computer’ Behind the Moon Landing Was a Black Woman

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