The United States of the United Races


Book Description

Barack Obama’s historic presidency has re-inserted mixed race into the national conversation. While the troubled and pejorative history of racial amalgamation throughout U.S. history is a familiar story, The United States of the United Races reconsiders an understudied optimist tradition, one which has praised mixture as a means to create a new people, bring equality to all, and fulfill an American destiny. In this genealogy, Greg Carter re-envisions racial mixture as a vehicle for pride and a way for citizens to examine mixed America as a better America. Tracing the centuries-long conversation that began with Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer in the 1780s through to the Mulitracial Movement of the 1990s and the debates surrounding racial categories on the U.S. Census in the twenty-first century, Greg Carter explores a broad range of documents and moments, unearthing a new narrative that locates hope in racial mixture. Carter traces the reception of the concept as it has evolved over the years, from and decade to decade and century to century, wherein even minor changes in individual attitudes have paved the way for major changes in public response. The United States of the United Races sweeps away an ugly element of U.S. history, replacing it with a new understanding of race in America.







Freedom for the Thought That We Hate


Book Description

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.




The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement


Book Description

Is there...any conflict between that Higher Law and the Constitution? In 1853, Wendell Phillips addresses the American Anti-Slavery Society. He explains why he embraces the theory and his stance on abolitionism. He further endorses the anti-slavery movement and its importance in assuring America's Democracy.




The Speeches of Frederick Douglass


Book Description

A collection of twenty of Frederick Douglass’s most important orations This volume brings together twenty of Frederick Douglass’s most historically significant speeches on a range of issues, including slavery, abolitionism, civil rights, sectionalism, temperance, women’s rights, economic development, and immigration. Douglass’s oratory is accompanied by speeches that he considered influential, his thoughts on giving public lectures and the skills necessary to succeed in that endeavor, commentary by his contemporaries on his performances, and modern-day assessments of Douglass’s effectiveness as a public speaker and advocate.




No Slave-Hunting in the Old Bay State


Book Description

Excerpt from No Slave-Hunting in the Old Bay State: Speech of Wendell Phillips, Esq., Before the Committee on Federal Relation, in Support of the Petitions Asking for a Law to Prevent the Recapture of Fugitive Slaves, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Thursday, February 17, 1859 As to the doubt whether that petition represents the public sentiment of the State, you know, gentle men, as well as I do, that it does represent it. You know as well as I do - and you do not need our evi dence to assure you of the fact - that you cannot find one respectable man in a hundred who is ready to look his fellow-citizens in the face, and declare, 'i mean to help the slave-hunter in catching his slave.' Let some trading othee-seeker or shameless hound say so, and the universal shrinking and loathing of the community show in what an infinite minority he stands. You know that when, bolstered by office, tempted by salary, or bribed by ambition, here and there one man can be found ready to say, I should like to see a slave-hunt, and join in it; the Fugitive Slave Bill ought to be executed - you know well that, bred in Massachusetts, and vaunting himself as loud ly as he may, not one in ten can stand fire, but when you bring him face to face with a fugitive slave, he shrinks from his own principles. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past


Book Description

Born into an elite Boston family and a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, white Massachusetts aristocrat Wendell Phillips’s path seemed clear. Yet he rejected his family’s and society’s expectations and gave away most of his great wealth by the time of his death in 1884. Instead he embraced the most incendiary causes of his era and became a radical advocate for abolitionism and reform. Only William Lloyd Garrison rivaled Phillips’s importance to the antislavery and reform movements, and no one equaled his eloquence or intellectual depth. His presence on the lecture circuit brought him great celebrity both in America and in Europe and helped ensure that his reputation as an advocate for social justice extended for generations after his death. In Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past, the world’s leading Phillips scholars explore the themes and ideas that animated this activist and his colleagues. These essays shed new light on the reform movement after the Civil War, especially regarding Phillips’s sustained role in Native American rights and the labor movement, subjects largely neglected by contemporary historical literature. In this collection, Phillips’s views on matters related to race, ethnicity, gender, and class serve as a lens through which the contributors examine crucial social justice questions that remain powerful to this day. Tackling a range of subjects that emerged during Phillips’s career, from the effectiveness of agitation, the dilemmas of democratic politics, and antislavery constitutional theory, to religion, violence, interracial friendships, women’s rights, Native American rights, labor rights, and historical memory, these essays offer a portrait of a man whose deep sense of fairness and justice shaped the course of American history.







The African-American Mosaic


Book Description

"This guide lists the numerous examples of government documents, manuscripts, books, photographs, recordings and films in the collections of the Library of Congress which examine African-American life. Works by and about African-Americans on the topics of slavery, music, art, literature, the military, sports, civil rights and other pertinent subjects are discussed"--