Donald G. Nieman - Böcker

Widely considered the first history of US Constitutionalism that places African Americans at the center, Promises to Keep is a compelling overview of how conflict over African Americans' place in American society has shaped the Constitution, law, and our understanding of citizenship and rights. Both authoritative and accessible, this revised and expanded second edition incorporates key insights from the last three decades of scholarship and makes sense of recent developments in civil rights, from the War on Drugs to the rise of Black Lives Matter. Promises to Keep shows how African Americans have played a critical role in transforming the Constitution from a bulwark of slavery to a document that is truer to the nation's promise of equality. The book begins by examining debates about race from the Revolutionary Era at the Constitutional Convention and covers the establishment of civil rights protections during Reconstruction, the Jim Crow backlash, and the evolution of the civil rights movement, from the formation of the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People to legal victories and massive organized protests. Comprehensive in scope, this book moves from debates over slavery at the nation's founding to contemporary discussions of affirmative action, voting rights, mass incarceration, and police brutality. In the process, it provides readers with a historical perspective critical to understanding some of today's most important social and political issues.

This is Volume 4 of 12 of a series on the African American Life in Post-Emancipation South, 1861 to 1900. It focuses on African Americans and non-agricultural labor in the South between 1865 and the 1900s. Looking at urban life away from the stereotypical image of farmers in the countryside it shows African American workers as having an integral role in the economic life of southern cities and towns. The essays included explore the non agricultural dimension of African-American economic life in the decades following emancipation.

The eight essays in this volume imaginatively explore the interrelationship between law and society in nineteenth-century America and encompass in their discussion some of the major historical issues of the era.

Much of the current reassessment of race, culture, and criminal justice in the nineteenth-century South has been based on intensive community studies. Drawing on previously untapped sources, the nine original papers collected here represent some of the best new work on how racial justice can be shaped by the particulars of time and place.Although each essay is anchored in the local, several important larger themes emerge across the volume—such as the importance of personality and place, the movement of former slaves from the capriciousness of "plantation justice" to the (theoretically) more evenhanded processes of the courts, and the increased presence of government in daily aspects of American life.Local Matters cites a wide range of examples to support these themes. One essay considers the case of a quasi-free slave in Natchez, Mississippi—himself a slaveowner—who was "reined in" by his master through the courts, while another shows how federal aims were subverted during trials held in the aftermath of the 1876 race riots in Ellenton, South Carolina. Other topics covered include the fear of black criminality as a motivation of Klan activity; the career of Thomas Ruffin, slaveowner and North Carolina Supreme Court Justice; blacks and the ballot in Washington County, Texas; the overturned murder conviction of a North Carolina slave who had killed a white man; the formation of a powerful white bloc in Vicksburg, Mississippi; agitation by black and white North Carolina women for greater protections from abusive white male elites; and slaves, crime, and the common law in New Orleans.Together, these studies offer new insights into the nature of law and the fate of due process at different stages of a highly racialized society.

LaWanda Cox is widely regarded as one of the most influential historians of Reconstruction and nineteenth-century race relations. Imaginative in conception, forcefully argued, and elegantly written, her work helped reshape historians' understanding of the age of emancipation. Freedom, Racism, and Reconstruction brings together Cox's most important writings spanning more than forty years, including previously published essays, excerpts from her books, and an unpublished essay.Now retired from Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Cox gave Donald G. Nieman her full cooperation on this project. The result is a cohesive book of refreshing and sophisticated analysis that illuminates a pivotal era in American history. It not only serves as a lasting testament to a highly original scholar but also makes available to readers a remarkable body of scholarship that remains required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the age of emancipation and the historian's craft.

How did the world’s oldest democracy lose its mojo? How did we get to a point where we face existential crises like climate change yet leaders can’t agree that there’s a problem let alone develop solutions? Political leaders bear some of the responsibility. Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, to name a few, have shattered political norms and transformed our politics into a free-for-all in which personal attacks, appeals to bigotry and fear, disregard for truth, and disdain for governing have become the norm. But they are more a symptom than the cause. The Path to Paralysis examines changes in political culture during the past 60 years – conflict over race, religion and gender; wrenching economic changes and growing concentration of wealth; the end of the Cold War; hardening regional divisions; and dramatic changes in communications – that made Donald Trump possible, if not inevitable. Long in the making, these cross-currents came together in the early 21st century – as the United States experienced the deepest recession since the 1930s and elected its first Black president – to create the perfect storm. The result was toxic and deeply polarised politics that threatened the existence of constitutional government.