The Crucible of Race

The Crucible of Race PDF Author: Joel Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195033825
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 582

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Book Description
This landmark work provides a fundamental reinterpretation of the American South in the years since the Civil War, especially the decades after Reconstruction, from 1877 to 1920. Covering all aspects of Southern life--white and black, conservative and progressive, literary and political--it offers a new understanding of the forces that shaped the South of today.

The Crucible of Race

The Crucible of Race PDF Author: Joel Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195033825
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 582

Get Book Here

Book Description
This landmark work provides a fundamental reinterpretation of the American South in the years since the Civil War, especially the decades after Reconstruction, from 1877 to 1920. Covering all aspects of Southern life--white and black, conservative and progressive, literary and political--it offers a new understanding of the forces that shaped the South of today.

American Crucible

American Crucible PDF Author: Gary Gerstle
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400883091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
This sweeping history of twentieth-century America follows the changing and often conflicting ideas about the fundamental nature of American society: Is the United States a social melting pot, as our civic creed warrants, or is full citizenship somehow reserved for those who are white and of the "right" ancestry? Gary Gerstle traces the forces of civic and racial nationalism, arguing that both profoundly shaped our society. After Theodore Roosevelt led his Rough Riders to victory during the Spanish American War, he boasted of the diversity of his men's origins- from the Kentucky backwoods to the Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods of northeastern cities. Roosevelt’s vision of a hybrid and superior “American race,” strengthened by war, would inspire the social, diplomatic, and economic policies of American liberals for decades. And yet, for all of its appeal to the civic principles of inclusion, this liberal legacy was grounded in “Anglo-Saxon” culture, making it difficult in particular for Jews and Italians and especially for Asians and African Americans to gain acceptance. Gerstle weaves a compelling story of events, institutions, and ideas that played on perceptions of ethnic/racial difference, from the world wars and the labor movement to the New Deal and Hollywood to the Cold War and the civil rights movement. We witness the remnants of racial thinking among such liberals as FDR and LBJ; we see how Italians and Jews from Frank Capra to the creators of Superman perpetuated the New Deal philosophy while suppressing their own ethnicity; we feel the frustrations of African-American servicemen denied the opportunity to fight for their country and the moral outrage of more recent black activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X. Gerstle argues that the civil rights movement and Vietnam broke the liberal nation apart, and his analysis of this upheaval leads him to assess Reagan’s and Clinton’s attempts to resurrect nationalism. Can the United States ever live up to its civic creed? For anyone who views racism as an aberration from the liberal premises of the republic, this book is must reading. Containing a new chapter that reconstructs and dissects the major struggles over race and nation in an era defined by the War on Terror and by the presidency of Barack Obama, American Crucible is a must-read for anyone who views racism as an aberration from the liberal premises of the republic.

The Crucible of Race: Black - White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation

The Crucible of Race: Black - White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation PDF Author: Joel Williamson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description


The Immigration Crucible

The Immigration Crucible PDF Author: Philip Kretsedemas
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527322
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In the debate over U. S. immigration, all sides now support policy and practice that expand the parameters of enforcement. Philip Kretsedemas examines this development from several different perspectives, exploring recent trends in U.S. immigration policy, the rise in extralegal state power over the course of the twentieth century, and discourses on race, nation, and cultural difference that have influenced politics and academia. He also analyzes the recent expansion of local immigration law and explains how forms of extralegal discretionary authority have become more prevalent in federal immigration policy, making the dispersion of local immigration laws possible. While connecting such extralegal state powers to a free flow position on immigration, Kretsedemas also observes how these same discretionary powers have been used historically to control racial minority populations, particularly African Americans under Jim Crow. This kind of discretionary authority often appeals to "states rights" arguments, recently revived by immigration control advocates. Using these and other examples, Kretsedemas explains how both sides of the immigration debate have converged on the issue of enforcement and how, despite differing interests, each faction has shaped the commonsense assumptions defining the debate.

Black Lives, White Lives

Black Lives, White Lives PDF Author: Bob Blauner
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520386019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
The oral history of 16 blacks and 12 whites who fought for racial change and civil rights.

Racism

Racism PDF Author: George M. Fredrickson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400873673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Are antisemitism and white supremacy manifestations of a general phenomenon? Why didn't racism appear in Europe before the fourteenth century, and why did it flourish as never before in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Why did the twentieth century see institutionalized racism in its most extreme forms? Why are egalitarian societies particularly susceptible to virulent racism? What do apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the American South under Jim Crow have in common? How did the Holocaust advance civil rights in the United States? With a rare blend of learning, economy, and cutting insight, George Fredrickson surveys the history of Western racism from its emergence in the late Middle Ages to the present. Beginning with the medieval antisemitism that put Jews beyond the pale of humanity, he traces the spread of racist thinking in the wake of European expansionism and the beginnings of the African slave trade. And he examines how the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century romantic nationalism created a new intellectual context for debates over slavery and Jewish emancipation. Fredrickson then makes the first sustained comparison between the color-coded racism of nineteenth-century America and the antisemitic racism that appeared in Germany around the same time. He finds similarity enough to justify the common label but also major differences in the nature and functions of the stereotypes invoked. The book concludes with a provocative account of the rise and decline of the twentieth century's overtly racist regimes--the Jim Crow South, Nazi Germany, and apartheid South Africa--in the context of world historical developments. This illuminating work is the first to treat racism across such a sweep of history and geography. It is distinguished not only by its original comparison of modern racism's two most significant varieties--white supremacy and antisemitism--but also by its eminent readability.

Not Even Past

Not Even Past PDF Author: Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834198
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The paradox of racial inequality in Barack Obama's America Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner's famous remark "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama's America and how President Obama intends to deal with it. Obama's journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions—particularly between blacks and whites—remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama's evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama's place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency. Does Obama's presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

Race and Revolution

Race and Revolution PDF Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1461641640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The most profound crisis of conscience for white Americans at the end of the eighteenth century became their most tragic failure. Race and Revolution is a trenchant study of the revolutionary generation's early efforts to right the apparent contradiction of slavery and of their ultimate compromises that not only left the institution intact but provided it with the protection of a vastly strengthened government after 1788. Reversing the conventional view that blames slavery on the South's social and economic structures, Nash stresses the role of the northern states in the failure to abolish slavery. It was northern racism and hypocrisy as much as southern intransigence that buttressed "the peculiar institution." Nash also shows how economic and cultural factors intertwined to result not in an apparently judicious decision of the new American nation but rather its most significant lost opportunity. Race and Revolution describes the free black community's response to this failure of the revolution's promise, its vigorous and articulate pleas for justice, and the community's successes in building its own African-American institutions within the hostile environment of early nineteenth-century America. Included with the text of Race and Revolution are nineteen rare and crucial documents—letters, pamphlets, sermons, and speeches—which provide evidence for Nash's controversial and persuasive claims. From the words of Anthony Benezet and Luther Martin to those of Absalom Jones and Caesar Sarter, readers may judge the historical record for themselves. "In reality," argues Nash, "the American Revolution represents the largest slave uprising in our history." Race and Revolution is the compelling story of that failed quest for the promise of freedom.

Crucible of Reconstruction

Crucible of Reconstruction PDF Author: Ted Tunnell
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807118036
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In late April, 1862, Union warships slipped past the Confederate river forts below New Orleans and blasted the Rebel fleet guarding the city. Advancing overland, General Benjamin F. Butler occupied New Orleans on May Day, and for the duration of the war the Stars and Stripes waved over the Confederacy's largest city. The reconstruction of Louisiana began almost immediately. In Crucible of Reconstruction, Ted Tunnell examines the byzantine complexities of Louisiana's restoration to the Union, from the capture of New Orleans to the downfall of the Radical Republicans a decade and a half later. He writes with insight about wartime Reconstruction and the period of presidential Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson, but his ultimate concern is with Radical Reconstruction and that uneasy coalition of Unionists, free blacks, and carpetbaggers that formed the Louisiana Republican party after Appomattox and struggled fitfully for a biracial society based on equality and justice. One of the distinguishing features of Crucible of Reconstruction is its concern with the origins of Radicalism. Tunnell finds that nearly two-thirds of Louisiana Unionists were actually outsiders, men who had come to Louisiana from the North or from abroad. Of the remainder, many had either been born in the border slave states that sided with the North in 1861 or had been deeply influenced by Northern culture. The free blacks were the most radical element of the Republican party and for a brief but critical moment actually dominated the reconstruction process; with a black majority in the constitutional convention of 1867-1868, they drafted a civil rights program that made Louisiana's Reconstruction constitution, along with South Carolina's, a model of Republican Radicalism. In the end, though, the carpetbaggers dominated Republican Reconstruction. Although few in number, they controlled the immense federal bureaucracy centered in New Orleans, and in a government that depended on support from Washington for its very survival, they alone had influence on the Potomac. For a generation historians have struggled to explain the destructive factionalism that crippled the Republican regimes in Louisiana and other Reconstruction states. In a thesis of wide applicability, Tunnel shows how Republican factionalism was actually rooted in a larger "crisis of legitimacy." Louisiana Republicans confronted enemies who challenged not merely their policies but their very right to exist, enemies whose overriding goal was to expunge the Republican party from the polity. Led by Governor Henry Clay Warmoth, a carpetbagger from Illinois, the Republicans responded to the crisis with a twofold strategy embodied in what Tunnell calls the policy of force and the policy of peace. The policy of force, while it partially deterred assaults on Republican voters, undermined northern support for Reconstruction. The policy of peace not only failed to conciliate white Louisianians, it generated the vicious factionalism that destroyed the Republican party from within. The Warmoth strategies were in fact mutually contradictory; they negated each other and demolished his government. In his final chapter, Tunnell recounts the career of Marshall Harvey Twitchell, a Vermont carpetbagger who settled in north Louisiana in 1866. Twitchell's tragic story, gleaned from his unpublished autobiography and government records, provides a stunningly immediate reminder of the violent and unlawful conditions that existed during the final years of Reconstruction in Louisiana. Tunnell's analyses of Unionism, of black and white political leadership, of Republican factionalism, and of the brutal eradication of Republicanism in the state make this one of the most fascinating and provocative of recent books on Reconstruction.

How Race Survived US History

How Race Survived US History PDF Author: David R. Roediger
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178873646X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
An absorbing chronicle of the role of race in US history, by the foremost historian of race and labor The Obama era produced countless articles arguing that America’s race problems were over. The election of Donald Trump has proved those hasty pronouncements wrong. Race has always played a central role in US society and culture. Surveying a period from the late seventeenth century—the era in which W.E.B. Du Bois located the emergence of “whiteness”—through the American Revolution and the Civil War to the civil rights movement and the emergence of the American empire, How Race Survived US History reveals how race did far more than persist as an exception in a progressive national history. This masterful account shows how race has remained at the heart of American life well into the twenty-first century.