How "Their Accomplices Wore Robes" impacts other identities

Their Accomplices Wore Robes concentrates on the Black identity, studies the Black American experience. It analyzes how the Supreme Court has conspired with White Supremacy and his minions to deny Black people freedom from living as a subjected caste.

Yet, other identities, as I was writing, buzzed about in the back of my mind. I wanted readers to understand, subtextually, that the explained interpretations of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments could have also freed other oppressed identities from a subordinated existence. And still can. Please, I pleaded with readers, connect these stories on your own. As the grind of finishing the book wore me down, I hoped that someone else might author that exploration.

When I finished Accomplices and rejuvenation kicked in, I wondered if I should just write the book myself. Maybe I should chronicle how the judiciary has similarly conspired with the wicked to oppress other identities beyond Blackness. I contemplated how such a book might look, how it should differ from, yet amplify, the arguments in Accomplices, and how it would present an even more ambitious work. Then I composed an overview for it—Just as the Negro: How Courts Empowered Oppression Beyond the Black Identity, because regardless of whether I write this book, I want to explore these themes here at The Braveverse. And I want people to understand why and how the arguments made in Their Accomplices Wore Robes affects non-Black identities.

True progress comes through coalition building.

Their Accomplices Wore Robes chronicled how a sociopolitical movement, for the one-hundred-and-sixty-years since Confederate gray uniforms burned in defeat, has subjugated the Black identity with the cooperation of the Supreme Court of the United States. But parallel stories of oppression occurred during that same time, and they featured similar and overlapping movements that together repressed a broader sea of humanity. These stories concern persecution movements likewise reliant upon judicial assistance but organized around the objective of confining other identities—womanhood, Native American, Asian, Latino, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ identities—to an inferior station. Such tales yearn for thorough historical scholarly treatment. As courts facilitated the degradation of Black skin, they also operated as abettors in the widespread subjugation of so many more. America could have authored an outcome more fitting with its original conceit of God-created equality for all. We must date this failure’s genesis to the nineteenth century.

With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the Fourteenth in 1868, and the Fifteenth in 1870, America addressed the post-Civil War conundrum of how to shepherd into freedom four million formerly enslaved souls. Those three amendments—The Trinity—installed into the Constitution the legal instruments to forge a caste-less society. True, Congress crafted each primarily to safeguard freedpeople’s rights. Congress’s chosen language, nonetheless, birthed constitutional principles and national obligations that could have placed on a level plane all members of the political community contemplated with the phrase We the People. No chosen race. No favored gender. No preferred sexual orientation. Judges, whether seated before federal or state benches, however, have long forsaken those treasured principles and obligations. Many among We the People, consequently, suffocate inside isolated silos of subordination.

The words of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed the shackling of Black limbs. But they should have achieved something far more sacrosanct to American progress. They should have guaranteed freedom to all oppressed identities. The words of the Fourteenth Amendment granted the freedpeople citizenship and promised them equal legal regard. But they should have achieved something far more central to a just society. They should have guaranteed that no individual would belong to a subordinated caste. The words of the Fifteenth Amendment forbade race distinction in voting rights. But they should have achieved something far more crucial to political outcomes. They should have given ownership of American democracy to all, regardless of race. The Supreme Court’s nine black robes most shoulder responsibility for the ocean that cleaves The Trinity’s brawny potential from its feeble reality. That tragedy flows from the seminal dereliction of the justices not interpreting The Trinity as a protector of blackness against the tyranny of castework—caste producing and sustaining laws, policies, and actions. America’s most powerful judges indeed enabled the villainy of those who effectuated the goals of White Supremacy. 

The Supreme Court, more pointedly, sapped The Trinity of all its transformational energy. It helped caste preservationists—those who, in the racial context, establish as an objective the primacy of the White population—chain Black folk to the bottom of a racial caste system. The Court allowed state actors and private individuals alike to slaughter. Disenfranchise. Segregate. Deny civil equality. They practically re-enslaved Black people in the decades following the Civil War. The justices chose constitutional interpretations that allowed their oppressors to exile blackness from We the People.

Other identities—between Black and White and beyond race—have suffered for those constitutional misinterpretations. They have, consequently, experienced oppression that is sometimes similar, often different, and frequently more debilitating than that faced by the Black identity. In degrading Black skin, caste preservationists who sought to keep Whiteness as America’s hegemonic force drafted a blueprint for division and conquest that has tormented countless hearts, most notably those of women. 

In response to the third National Women's Rights Convention, held in September 1852, James Gordon Bennett, editor for the New York Herald, excoriated the campaign for gender equality. “How did woman first become subject to man as she now is all over the world?" Bennett asked. “By her nature, her sex, just as the negro is and always will be, to the end of time, inferior to the White race, and, therefore, doomed to subjection; but happier than she would be in any other condition, just because it is the law of her nature.” Bennett harnessed the same rationale that justified domination of the Black identity—supposed manifest truths about natural inferiority—to cripple the pursuit of justice for women. Such stories inform how anti-Black bigotry created a vocabulary, a theory for subjugation, even muscle memory for the execution of caste production and maintenance against other identities.

In 2025, those championing castework premised on misogyny, cisheterosexism, or White superiority, have dragged the United States to a fateful hour. A majority of Americans simply cannot depend on the continued enjoyment of their rights. Instead of fighting for the expansion of liberty, or even clenching to retain the status quo, many, perversely, battle simply to return to where they stood not even a decade ago.

Women have sustained the pilfering of abortion rights, as even contraception rights face increasing attacks, meaning young women have less body autonomy than their mothers once did. Transgender minors endure denials of gender affirming care as they strain to stave off perpetual assaults to their very right to existence and dignity. Gay, bisexual, and queer people face losing their employment for their sexual orientations, while fearing their relatively newfound rights, like the right to marry, will vanish. Non-Black citizens of color bear increasingly rampant persecution in all facets of life—many dread that they cannot assume the safety and continued presence of their friends and family in America, as their identities are often deemed inherently foreign and criminal. Sociopolitical movements setting as their goal the pain of “the racial other,” the anguish of women, or the degradation of the LGBTQ+ population have received crucial helping hands from the judiciary, from the Supreme Court to state courts, compelling those from oppressed identities to plan counterattacks to save their necks.

Their Accomplices Wore Robes detailed a method of interpreting The Trinity that would secure complete Black emancipation from the caste system. These interpretations, though, can free all subordinated identities. Just as the Negro promises to take the raw materials from Their Accomplices Wore Robes to propose an even grander work. A more ambitious project. One that investigates legal disputes from the same temporal period—post-Civil War to the present—but points the camera at different identities, precluding overlap while exploring even more diverse varieties of castework. New protagonists. New adversaries. New events. Same old America.

By foregrounding non-Black identities, Just as the Negro augments our understanding of White Supremacy. And the introduction of White Supremacy’s brother-in-torment—The Patriarchy—enhances our knowledge of subordination in America. This book, through examination of legal disputes from lower state courts, lower federal courts, and the Supreme Court, promises to reveal how a reimagined interpretation of The Trinity can liberate all.

As I said, regardless of whether I write this book, I will certainly explore these themes here.

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