Blue Laws

Particularly notable was the abolition of segregation laws, modified versions of southern states' "black codes" dating back to the era of slavery and the first years after emancipation. Virginia's long road to racial equality under the law included the efforts of black civil rights lawyers to end racial discrimination in the public schools, the 1960 Richmond sit-ins, a case against segregated courtrooms, and a court challenge to a law that could imprison or exile an interracial couple for their marriage. While emphasizing a single state, Blue Laws and Black Codes is framed in regional and national contexts. Regarding blue laws, Virginia resembled most American states. Regarding racial policy, Virginia was distinctly southern. Book jacket.

The founders of the United States were well aware of religious differences in the new nation. Oppression had forced varied European religious groups to seek homes elsewhere, some in the new world of America. Governmental pressures toward conformity in religion had in the past led to corruption and civil strife. Thus, Congress made a dual assertion in its First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." However, the ethical foundations of American society--and therefore its laws--intermingle with the moral codes of religions, including the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. This handbook helps bring understanding and meaning to the controversies that have arisen in present day society over the application of the Ten Commandments to public law and moral problems. Applications can be logical and legal, or can violate the separation of church and state called for in the First Amendment. Part One provides background on the Ten Commandments. It gives the various versions found in the Old Testament, and explains the non-Israelite influences on those versions (the Hammurabi Code, for example). The moral thinking of the ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hebrew cultures is examined. The modern Jewish tradition is detailed, as well as the different interpretations placed on the Ten Commandments by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and other Protestants. Part Two focuses on the modern controversies, assessing the differing sides of each. Among the many controversies covered are government funding of faith-based charities, posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings, science versus religion in schools, prayer in public places, blue laws, stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion and war, racial profiling and covenant marriages.

Women were once excluded everywhere from the legal profession, but by the 1990s the Virginia Supreme Court had three women among its seven justices. This is just one example of how law in Virginia has been transformed over the past century, as it has across the South and throughout the nation. In Blue Laws and Black Codes, Peter Wallenstein shows that laws were often changed not through legislative action or constitutional amendment but by citizens taking cases to state and federal courtrooms. Due largely to court rulings, for example, stores in Virginia are no longer required by "blue laws" to close on Sundays. Particularly notable was the abolition of segregation laws, modified versions of southern states’ "black codes" dating back to the era of slavery and the first years after emancipation. Virginia’s long road to racial equality under the law included the efforts of black civil rights lawyers to end racial discrimination in the public schools, the 1960 Richmond sit-ins, a case against segregated courtrooms, and a court challenge to a law that could imprison or exile an interracial couple for their marriage. While emphasizing a single state, Blue Laws and Black Codes is framed in regional and national contexts. Regarding blue laws, Virginia resembled most American states. Regarding racial policy, Virginia was distinctly southern. Wallenstein shows how people pushed for changes in the laws under which they live, love, work, vote, study, and shop—in Virginia, the South, and the nation.

Now in paperback, from the award-winning author of Jelly Roll and Book of Hours, a rich and lively gathering of highlights from the first twenty years of an extraordinary career, interspersed with "B sides" and "bonus tracks" from this prolific and widely acclaimed poet. Blue Laws gathers poems written over the past two decades, drawing from all nine of Kevin Young's previously published books of poetry and including a number of uncollected, often unpublished, poems. From his stunning lyric debut (Most Way Home, 1995) and the amazing "double album" life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2001;"remixed" for Knopf in 2005), through his brokenhearted Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003) and his recent forays into adult grief and the joys of birth in Dear Darkness (2008) and Book of Hours (2014), this collection provides a grand tour of a poet whose personal poems and political poems are equally riveting. Together with wonderful outtakes and previously unseen blues, the profoundly felt poems here of family, Southern food, and loss are of a piece with the depth of personal sensibility and humanity found in his Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels or bold sequences such as "The Ballad of Jim Crow" and a new "Homage to Phillis Wheatley."