Early DC Courts Project
Students at Oberlin have worked on this ongoing project for the past two summers to showcase a court in the making. What they learned is that the court system functioned to ensure the social order of the nation’s capital. Disputes between women and men, violence against enslaved and free black people, theft among white neighbors, all illuminate the ways that categories like race, gender, and class factored in arrests, court decisions, and depictions of such cases in the locals news.
On Second Thought 