Book Reviews

Those who understand racism to be systemic and structural will readily appreciate this new book showing how structural racism came to manifest and perpetuate itself in America’s infrastructure. Aptly named Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, this book describes how racism has shaped America’s transportation infrastructure – interstate highways drilling through Black urban neighborhoods, destroying homes, churches, and businesses; city streets and public bus routes designed to keep Black people out of neighborhoods; sidewalks never laid or left unusable so that members of Black communities are forced to walk in the streets.The author, Deborah N. Archer, is Associate…

W. Caleb McDaniel of Rice University uncovered the story of Henrietta Wood, a woman born into slavery, freed, and re-enslaved. He sets her narrative in its nineteenth century context to expose the exploitation she endured as altogether widespread and common. The moving story of Wood’s years in slavery, while shocking, is not extraordinary. However, the post-Civil War restitution she won is unprecedented.  Henrietta Wood was born a slave in Kentucky, sold twice, and taken by her owner to New Orleans. When her owner came upon hard times, she wound up working for his wife in Cincinnati, Ohio, where, in 1848,…