By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners
Margaret A. Burnham
A Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction One of NPR's Books We Love in 2022 • Named a Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, and Publishers Weekly A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn’t lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960.
Award History
2 wins · 4 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hillman Prize for Book Journalism | 2023 | Winner | Official source |
| Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History | 2022 | Winner | Official source |
| Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionMajor | 2023 | Longlist | Official source |
| Kirkus Prize for NonfictionMajor | 2022 | Finalist | Official source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
03 Suggested argument
If formal law cannot protect a person from lynching, then lynching functions as a legal practice sustained by legal norms.
Model confidence 68%
04 Reading orientation
55 / 100 academicTrade / academic crossover
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 80%.