The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson PDF Author: Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479802182
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Shares the story of the revolutionary Marxist and Catholic Grace Holmes Carlson and her life-long dedication to challenging social and economic inequality On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson returned to her work as an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor of psychology at St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis where she advocated for social justice, now as a Catholic Marxist. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist is a historical biography that examines the story of this complicated woman in the context of her times with a specific focus on her experiences as a member of the working class, as a Catholic, and as a woman. Her story illuminates the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. It contributes to recent historical scholarship exploring the importance of faith in workers’ lives and politics. And it uncovers both the possibilities and limitations for working-class and revolutionary Marxist women in the period between the first and second wave feminist movements. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) ultimately reveals significant continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her particular partisan commitments, most notably her life-long dedication to challenging the root causes of social and economic inequality. In that struggle, Carlson ultimately proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson PDF Author: Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479802182
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shares the story of the revolutionary Marxist and Catholic Grace Holmes Carlson and her life-long dedication to challenging social and economic inequality On December 8, 1941, Grace Holmes Carlson, the only female defendant among eighteen Trotskyists convicted under the Smith Act, was sentenced to sixteen months in federal prison for advocating the violent overthrow of the government. After serving a year in Alderson prison, Carlson returned to her work as an organizer for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and ran for vice president of the United States under its banner in 1948. Then, in 1952, she abruptly left the SWP and returned to the Catholic Church. With the support of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had educated her as a child, Carlson began a new life as a professor of psychology at St. Mary’s Junior College in Minneapolis where she advocated for social justice, now as a Catholic Marxist. The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist is a historical biography that examines the story of this complicated woman in the context of her times with a specific focus on her experiences as a member of the working class, as a Catholic, and as a woman. Her story illuminates the workings of class identity within the context of various influences over the course of a lifespan. It contributes to recent historical scholarship exploring the importance of faith in workers’ lives and politics. And it uncovers both the possibilities and limitations for working-class and revolutionary Marxist women in the period between the first and second wave feminist movements. The long arc of Carlson’s life (1906–1992) ultimately reveals significant continuities in her political consciousness that transcended the shifts in her particular partisan commitments, most notably her life-long dedication to challenging the root causes of social and economic inequality. In that struggle, Carlson ultimately proved herself to be a truly fierce woman.

Into the Bright Sunshine

Into the Bright Sunshine PDF Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197535208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
From one of the country's most distinguished journalists, a revisionist and riveting look at the American politician whom history has judged a loser, yet who played a key part in the greatest social movement of the 20th century. "Riveting. . . . A superbly written tale of moral and political courage for present-day readers who find themselves in similarly dark times." -The New York Times During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president -the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate -but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. Even under Franklin Roosevelt, the party had dodged the issue in order to keep a bloc of Southern segregationists-the so-called Dixiecrats-in the New Deal coalition. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, just 37 and the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium. Defying Truman's own desire to occupy the middle ground, Humphrey urged the delegates to "get out of the shadow of state's rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights." Humphrey's speech put everything on the line, rhetorically and politically, to move the party, and the country, forward. To the surprise of many, including Humphrey himself, the delegates voted to adopt a meaningful civil-rights plank. With no choice but to run on it, Truman seized the opportunity it offered, desegregating the armed forces and in November upsetting the frontrunner Thomas Dewey, a victory due in part to an unprecedented surge of Black voters. The outcome of that week in July 1948-which marks its 75th anniversary as this book is published-shapes American politics to this day. And it was in turned shaped by Humphrey. His journey to that pivotal speech runs from a remote, all-white hamlet in South Dakota to the mayoralty of Minneapolis as he tackles its notorious racism and anti-Semitism to his role as a national champion of multiracial democracy. His allies in that struggle include a Black newspaper publisher, a Jewish attorney, and a professor who had fled Nazi Germany. And his adversaries are the white supremacists, Christian Nationalists, and America Firsters of mid-century America - one of whom tries to assassinate him. Here is a book that celebrates one of the overlooked landmarks of civil rights history, and illuminates the early life and enduring legacy of the man who helped bring it about.

Making Minnesota Liberal

Making Minnesota Liberal PDF Author: Jennifer Alice Delton
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816639229
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In Making Minnesota Liberal, Jennifer A. Delton delves into the roots of Minnesota politics and traces the change from the regional, third-party, class-oriented politics of the Farmer-Labor party to the national, two-party, pluralistic liberalism of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party (DFL). While others have examined how anticommunism and the Cold War shaped this transformation, Delton takes a new approach, showing the key roles played by antiracism and the civil rights movement. In telling this story, Delton contributes to our understanding not only of Minnesotas political history but also of.

The Politics of Equality

The Politics of Equality PDF Author: Timothy Nels Thurber
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231110471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Timothy N. Thurber explores the links between Senator Hubert Humphrey's policies on racial justice and economic reform. Thurber investigates Humphrey's legislative agenda in the context of the tensions between the class-based politics of the New Deal to which Humphrey wished the party to return and the rights-based politics that eventually came to dominate the Democratic platform. Although Humphrey is often associated with the civil rights movement, Thurber shows that he stood out in his commitment to achieving racial equality through means of economic reform, an approach that was not readily embraced by the Democratic Party.Thurber begins by tracing Humphrey's early life, and goes on to detail the rise of his political career, his lifelong commitment to the New Deal goal of economic equality, and his legislative agenda as a senator. From the Fair Employment Practices law, to the triumphant passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to more radical recommendations--such as a Domestic Marshall Plan--Humphrey became concerned with how structural changes in the economy effected African Americans.Thurber uses Humphrey's career not only to explore the intersection of race, class, and politics in the second half of this century but also to reveal the trajectory of Democratic politics in the postwar era as the party faced the increasingly difficult task of maintaining the New Deal coalition. Hubert Humphrey's agenda of racial justice through economic reform-its triumphs and its failures-represents for Thurber the precarious position of liberalism and a road still not taken.

The North Star State

The North Star State PDF Author: Anne J. Aby
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 9780873514446
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Culled from the best of Minnesota History magazine, these essays on 200 years of Minnesota history encompass a wide range of its past, from frontier life to the age of technological innovation, from Dakota and Ojibwe history to the story of a Chinese family in St. Paul, from lumber workers' and truckers' strikes to the women's suffrage movement.

Trotskyists on Trial

Trotskyists on Trial PDF Author: Donna T Haverty-Stacke
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479849626
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Passed in June 1940, the Smith Act was a peacetime anti-sedition law that marked a dramatic shift in the legal definition of free speech protection in America by criminalizing the advocacy of disloyalty to the government by force. It also criminalized the acts of printing, publishing, or distributing anything advocating such sedition and made it illegal to organize or belong to any association that did the same. It was first brought to trial in July 1941, when a federal grand jury in Minneapolis indicted twenty-nine Socialist Workers Party members, fifteen of whom also belonged to the militant Teamsters Local 544. Eighteen of the defendants were convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. Examining the social, political, and legal history of the first Smith Act case, this book focuses on the tension between the nation’s cherished principle of free political expression and the demands of national security on the eve of America’s entry into World War II. Based on newly declassified government documents and recently opened archival sources, Trotskyists on Trial explores the implications of the case for organized labor and civil liberties in wartime and postwar America. The central issue of how Americans have tolerated or suppressed dissent during moments of national crisis is not only important to our understanding of the past, but also remains a pressing concern in the post-9/11 world. This volume traces some of the implications of the compromise between rights and security that was made in the mid-twentieth century, offering historical context for some of the consequences of similar bargains struck today.

Main Street Public Library

Main Street Public Library PDF Author: Wayne A. Wiegand
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609380673
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The author studies four small-town libraries in the Midwest from the late nineteenth century through the federal Library Service Act of 1956, and shows that these institutions served a much different purpose than is often perceived. Rather than acting as neutral institutions that are vital to democracy, these libraries were actually mediating community literary values and providing a public space for the construction of social harmony. The libraries, and the librarians who ran them, were often just as susceptible to the political and social pressures of their time as any other public institution. By analyzing the collections of all four libraries and revealing what was being read and why certain acquisitions were passed over, the atuhor challenges both traditional perceptions and professional rhetoric about the role of libraries in our small-town communities. While the American public library has become essential to its local community, it is for reasons significantly different than those articulated by the "library faith."

Indispensable Outcasts

Indispensable Outcasts PDF Author: Frank Tobias Higbie
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252070983
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Often overlooked in the history of Progressive Era labor, the hoboes who rode the rails in search of seasonal work have nevertheless secured a place in the American imagination. The stories of the men who hunted work between city and countryside, men alternately portrayed as either romantic adventurers or degenerate outsiders, have not been easy to find. Nor have these stories found a comfortable home in either rural or labor histories. Indispensable Outcasts weaves together history, anthropology, gender studies, and literary analysis to reposition these workers at the center of Progressive Era debates over class, race, manly responsibility, community, and citizenship. Combining incisive cultural criticism with the empiricism of a more traditional labor history, Frank Tobias Higbie illustrates how these so-called marginal figures were in fact integral to the communities they briefly inhabited and to the cultural conflicts over class, masculinity, and sexuality they embodied. He draws from life histories, the investigations of social reformers, and the organizing materials of the Industrial Workers of the World and presents a complex and compelling portrait of hobo life, from its often violent and dangerous working conditions to its ethic of "transient mutuality" that enabled survival and resistance on the road. More than a study of hobo life, this interdisciplinary book is also a meditation on the possibilities for writing history from the bottom up, as well as a frank discussion of the ways historians' fascination with personal narrative has colored their construction and presentation of history.

The Farmer's Lawyer

The Farmer's Lawyer PDF Author: Sarah Vogel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635575257
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
With a new foreword by Willie Nelson "An exquisitely written American saga." --Sarah Smarsh The "remarkably well told and heartfelt" (John Grisham) story of a young lawyer's impossible legal battle to stop the federal government from foreclosing on thousands of family farmers. In the early 1980s, farmers were suffering through the worst economic crisis to hit rural America since the Great Depression. Land prices were down, operating costs and interest rates were up, and severe weather devastated crops. Instead of receiving assistance from the government as they had in the 1930s, these hardworking family farmers were threatened with foreclosure by the very agency that Franklin Delano Roosevelt created to help them. Desperate, they called Sarah Vogel in North Dakota. Sarah, a young lawyer and single mother, listened to farmers who were on the verge of losing everything and, inspired by the politicians who had helped farmers in the '30s, she naively built a solo practice of clients who couldn't afford to pay her. Sarah began drowning in debt and soon her own home was facing foreclosure. In a David and Goliath legal battle reminiscent of A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich, Sarah brought a national class action lawsuit, which pitted her against the Reagan administration's Department of Justice, in her fight for family farmers' Constitutional rights. It was her first case. A courageous American story about justice and holding the powerful to account, The Farmer's Lawyer shows how the farm economy we all depend on for our daily bread almost fell apart due to the willful neglect of those charged to protect it, and what we can learn from Sarah's battle as a similar calamity looms large on our horizon once again.

Minnesota History

Minnesota History PDF Author: Theodore Christian Blegen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Minnesota
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Vol. 6 includes the 23d Biennial report of the Society, 1923/24, as an extra number.