Their Accomplices Wore Robes
How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System
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Their Accomplices Wore Robes
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Narrated by:
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Kevin R. Free
About this listen
A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes listeners from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.
©2025 Brando Simeo Starkey (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
"A searing indictment of judicially condoned—and even enshrined—racism in American law. . . . A powerfully argued study of a legal system that favors those who 'persevere in undermining Black freedom.'"—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Precisely outlines, within the historical context of the United States, how the Supreme Court has repeatedly and specifically denied or significantly delayed full rights of citizenship to Black people. . . . Starkey masterfully uses a unique blend of storytelling and legal documentation to share his declarations."—Library Journal (starred review)
“Their Accomplices Wore Robes is a stark, measured indictment of power dressed in principle. Brando Simeo Starkey lays bare the quiet, deliberate mechanisms by which the Supreme Court has upheld a racial caste system—not as an aberration but as a feature of its design. This is not a book about what we wish to believe about justice; it is a book about what justice, in practice, has too often been. Starkey writes with clarity and precision, refusing easy conclusions or consolations. The result is an indictment of a judicial system that must be fundamentally reformed or abolished if we're to have real democracy.”—Donovan X. Ramsey, author of When Crack Was King, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the National Book Award