Making race in the courtroom: the legal construction of three races in New Orleans

Much of the recent scholarship on New Orleans examines what race relations in the antebellum period looked as well as why antebellum Louisiana's gens de couleur enjoyed rights and privileges denied to free blacks throughout most of the United States.

This book, however, is less concerned with the what and why questions than with how people of color, acting within institutions of power, shaped those institutions in ways beyond their control.

As its title suggests, 'Making Race in the Courtroom' argues that race is best understood not as a category, but as a process.