Abstract
This article takes up the cause of Henry Hays, James Knowles, and Frank Cox, the cause of the Ku Klux Klan and other agents of racial violence in American history. I come to their cause not out of sympathy but in pursuit of a larger project devoted to the historical study of race, lawyers, and ethics in the American criminal justice system. Provoked by the jurisprudence of critical race theory ("CRT"), 30 the project investigates the rhetoric of race or "race-talk" in criminal defense advocacy and ethics within the context of racially motivated private violence.31 The purpose of this long-term project is to understand the status of race, racialized defense strategy, and race-neutral representation in the law and ethics of criminal defense lawyering. Out of this understanding, I hope, will come a general theory of racialized defenses grounded in the normative ideals of moral community.