The Ultimate Criminal

A single Black man is caught—or merely suspected—and suddenly an entire race is hauled into America’s “national rogues’ gallery.” Archibald Henry Grimké asks who, amid all the accusations, will trace the crime to its source.

In early twentieth-century America, Grimké challenges the rush to condemn a whole people for the acts of individuals. He looks back to slavery and emancipation, when freedom brought neither land nor security, and to laws and violence that narrowed the lives of the newly freed. His argument presses beyond accusation toward the conditions that shape conduct—and asks what justice can mean when society helped create the very problem it condemns. Who will write the “genesis” of the criminal, without fear or bias?

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