Every white southerner understood
        what keeping African Americans "down" meant and what it did
        not mean. It did not mean going to court; it did not mean relying on the
        law. It meant vigilante violence and lynching.
      Looking at Vicksburg, Mississippi,
        Roots of Disorder traces the origins of these terrible attitudes
        to the day-to-day operations of local courts. In Vicksburg, white exploitation
        of black labor through slavery evolved into efforts to use the law to
        define blacks' place in society, setting the stage for widespread tolerance
        of brutal vigilantism. Fed by racism and economics, whites' extralegal
        violence grew in a hothouse of more general hostility toward law and courts.
        Roots of Disorder shows how the criminal justice system itself
        plays a role in shaping the attitudes that encourage vigilantism.
      "Delivers what no other
        study has yet attempted. . . . Waldrep's book is one of the first systematically
        to use local trial data to explore questions of society and culture."
        -- Vernon Burton, author of "A Gentleman and an Officer":
        A Social and Military History of James B. Griffin's Civil War