Editors’ Note: In honor of the life of Lucius J. Barker (1928–2020), the first editor of the National Political Science Review and a former NCOBPS president, the editors commissioned a review of Dr. Barker’s scholarship from H.W. Perry Jr., who was an assistant professor at Washington University when Barker was the department chair. Perry taught for many years at Harvard University and is curently a tenured professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Government and the Law School. In the following article, Perry highlights a part of Professor Barker’s scholarship that may be less familiar to scholars of Black politics—his contributions to public law scholarship. At first glance, this may seem tangential to the study of Black politics. However, as Perry shows, Barker’s work in public law was deeply informed by his understanding of systemic racism; and Barker’s seminal work in...
University of California Press