Download or read book Unexampled Courage written by Richard Gergel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard.* How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America’s civil rights history. Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history. On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver’s disrespectful treatment of him. Woodard, in uniform, was arrested by the local police chief, Lynwood Shull, and beaten and blinded while in custody. President Harry Truman was outraged by the incident. He established the first presidential commission on civil rights and his Justice Department filed criminal charges against Shull. In July 1948, following his commission’s recommendation, Truman ordered an end to segregation in the U.S. armed forces. An all-white South Carolina jury acquitted Shull, but the presiding judge, J. Waties Waring, was conscience-stricken by the failure of the court system to do justice by the soldier. Waring described the trial as his “baptism of fire,” and began issuing major civil rights decisions from his Charleston courtroom, including his 1951 dissent in Briggs v. Elliott declaring public school segregation per se unconstitutional. Three years later, the Supreme Court adopted Waring’s language and reasoning in Brown v. Board of Education.
Download or read book Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice written by Robert Shogan and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2013-06-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Harry Truman was rescued from political obscurity to become Franklin Roosevelt's running mate, black Americans were deeply troubled. Many believed that Truman, born and raised in former slave-holding Missouri, was a step back on civil rights from Henry Wallace, the liberal incumbent vice president. But by the end of his own presidency, black newspaper publishers cited Truman for having "awakened the conscience of America and given new strength to our democracy by his courageous efforts on behalf of freedom and equality." In this first full-scale account of Truman's evolving views on civil rights, Robert Shogan recounts how Truman outgrew the bigotry of his Jackson County upbringing to become the first president since Lincoln to attempt to redress the nation's long history of injustice toward its black citizens—and in the process transformed the course of race relations in America. Shogan vividly demonstrates the full significance of the 33rd president's contributions to that transformation. He ordered the integration of the armed forces and threw the weight of the Justice Department behind the long struggle against segregation in housing and education. And he used the platform of his presidency to relentlessly trumpet the cause of equal rights for those least favored Americans, even making an unprecedented address to the NAACP. Going beyond other accounts of Truman, Shogan points out the political and personal factors that motivated the president and weighs the potential political costs and benefits of his civil rights actions. Shogan also explains Truman's shift away from his formative racial prejudices by shedding light on the forces that shaped his character and leadership qualities. These included his political tutelage under "Boss Tom" Pendergast, which taught him the value of black voters, and the influence of populism, which fostered his support for underdogs such as black Americans. Illuminating how Truman became the first president to make racial injustice a political priority-and the first to denounce segregation as well as discrimination—Shogan's book opens a new and provocative window on the struggle for civil rights in America.
Download or read book Justice Rising written by Patricia Sullivan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading civil rights historian places Robert Kennedy for the first time at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960sÑand shows how many of todayÕs issues can be traced back to that pivotal time. History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In Justice Rising, a landmark reconsideration of Robert KennedyÕs life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader. When protests broke out across the South, the young attorney general confronted escalating demands for racial justice. What began as a political problem soon became a moral one. In the face of vehement pushback from Southern Democrats bent on massive resistance, he put the weight of the federal government behind school desegregation and voter registration. Bobby KennedyÕs youthful energy, moral vision, and capacity to lead created a momentum for change. He helped shape the 1964 Civil Rights Act but knew no law would end racism. When the Watts uprising brought calls for more aggressive policing, he pushed back, pointing to the root causes of urban unrest: entrenched poverty, substandard schools, and few job opportunities. RFK strongly opposed the military buildup in Vietnam, but nothing was more important to him than Òthe revolution within our gates, the struggle of the American Negro for full equality and full freedom.Ó On the night of Martin Luther KingÕs assassination, KennedyÕs anguished appeal captured the hopes of a turbulent decade: ÒIn this difficult time for the United States it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.Ó It is a question that remains urgent and unanswered.
Download or read book In Darkest South Carolina written by Brian Hicks and published by J. Waties Waring and the Secre. This book was released on 2018-06 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a thriller that is a cross between To Kill a Mockingbird and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Brian Hicks takes us into the insular world of mid-20th century Charleston society, where one of the most unlikely civil rights heroes of all time has hatched a secret plan to change America...if someone doesn't kill him first.
Download or read book The Slow Undoing written by Stephen H. Lowe and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2021-06-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of how South Carolina's federal district courts were central to achieving and solidifying gains during the civil rights movement As the first comprehensive study of one state's federal district courts during the long civil rights movement, The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of the federal courts in the civil rights movement. It places the courts as a central battleground at the intersections of struggles over race, law, and civil rights. During the long civil rights movement, Black and White South Carolinians used the courts as a venue to contest the meanings of the constitution, justice, equality, and citizenship. African American plaintiffs and lawyers from South Carolina, with the support of Thurgood Marshall and other lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, brought and argued civil rights lawsuits in South Carolina's federal courts attempting to secure the vote, raise teacher salaries, and to equalize and then desegregate schools, parks, and public life. In response, white citizens, state politicians, and local officials, hired their own lawyers who countered these arguments by crafting new legal theories in an attempt to defend state practices and thwart African American aspirations of equality and to preserve white supremacy. The Slow Undoing argues for a reconsideration of the role of federal courts in the civil rights movement by demonstrating that both before and after Brown v. Board of Education, the federal district courts were centrally important to achieving and solidifying civil rights gains. It relies on the entire legal record of actions in the federal district courts of South Carolina from 1940 to 1970 to make the case. It argues that rather than relying on litigation during the pre-Brown era and direct action in the post-Brown era, African Americans instead used courts and direct action in tandem to bring down legal segregation throughout the long civil rights era. But the process was far from linear and the courts were not always a progressive force. The battles were long, the victories won were often imperfect, and many of the fights remain. Author Stephen H. Lowe offers a chronicle of this enduring struggle.
Download or read book America s Jewish Women A History from Colonial Times to Today written by Pamela Nadell and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of how Jewish women maintained their identity and influenced social activism as they wrote themselves into American history. What does it mean to be a Jewish woman in America? In a gripping historical narrative, Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the stories of a diverse group of extraordinary people—from the colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to labor organizer Bessie Hillman and the great justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to scores of other activists, workers, wives, and mothers who helped carve out a Jewish American identity. The twin threads binding these women together, she argues, are a strong sense of self and a resolute commitment to making the world a better place. Nadell recounts how Jewish women have been at the forefront of causes for centuries, fighting for suffrage, trade unions, civil rights, and feminism, and hoisting banners for Jewish rights around the world. Informed by shared values of America’s founding and Jewish identity, these women’s lives have left deep footprints in the history of the nation they call home.
Download or read book Stories of Struggle written by Claudia Smith Brinson and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pioneering study of the long and arduous struggle for civil rights in South Carolina, longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured—as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality. Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South. These firsthand accounts include those of the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot, a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston. Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike. These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress—and hope for the future.
Download or read book History of Corporal Fess Whitaker written by Fess Whitaker and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 18 years a miner, 9 years on the railroad, 6 years a soldier, and 5 years a politician. This is the life of Corporal Fess Whitaker. Whitaker spent most of his life in the Kentucky Mountains, with stints in Virginia as a coal miner, in Texas with the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, and abroad as a soldier. He includes a good deal of pioneer history and reminiscences of old timers, including those of Uncle Wesley Banks, the "Bugger Man" schoolmaster.
Download or read book A Book of Golden Deeds written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1927 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Brief History of Panics and Their Periodical Occurrence in the United States written by Clément Juglar and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hue 1968 written by Mark Bowden and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Black Hawk Down vividly recounts a pivotal Vietnam War battle in this New York Times bestseller: “An extraordinary feat of journalism”. —Karl Marlantes, Wall Street Journal In Hue 1968, Mark Bowden presents a detailed, day-by-day reconstruction of the most critical battle of the Tet Offensive. In the early hours of January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese launched attacks across South Vietnam. The lynchpin of this campaign was the capture of Hue, Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural capital. 10,000 troops descended from hidden camps and surged across the city, taking everything but two small military outposts. American commanders refused to believe the size and scope of the siege, ordering small companies of marines against thousands of entrenched enemy troops. After several futile and deadly days, Lieutenant Colonel Ernie Cheatham would finally come up with a strategy to retake the city block by block, in some of the most intense urban combat since World War II. With unprecedented access to war archives in the United States and Vietnam and interviews with participants from both sides, Bowden narrates each stage of this crucial battle through multiple viewpoints. Played out over 24 days and ultimately costing 10,000 lives, the Battle of Hue was by far the bloodiest of the entire war. When it ended, the American debate was never again about winning, only about how to leave. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in History Winner of the 2018 Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Greene Award for a distinguished work of nonfiction
Download or read book Sundog written by Jim Harrison and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “feisty, passionate novel” (Newsday) from a writer whose “storytelling instincts are nearly flawless” (The New York Times). The New York Times–bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Returning to Earth, Jim Harrison was one of our most beloved and acclaimed writers, adored by both readers and critics. Sundog is a powerful novel about the life and loves of a foreman named Robert Corvus Strang, who worked on giant dam projects around the world until he was crippled in a fall down a three-hundred-foot dam. Now as he tries to regain use of his legs, he has a chance to reassess his life, and a blasé journalist who has heard of Strang’s reputation in the field arrives to draw him out about his various incarnations. Strang, who has the violently heightened sensibilities of a man who has gone to the limits and back, recounts his monumental life moving from Michigan to Africa and the Amazon, including his several marriages and children, and dozens of lovers, Sundog is a story as true and gripping as real life, and ultimately as victorious.
Download or read book World War II and American Racial Politics written by Steven White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the myriad consequences of World War II for racial attitudes and the presidential response to civil rights.
Download or read book Manifesto for a Moral Revolution written by Jacqueline Novogratz and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An instant classic." —Arianna Huffington "Will inspire people from across the political spectrum." —Jonathan Haidt Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book of the Year Award, an essential shortlist of leadership ideas for everyone who wants to do good in this world, from Jacqueline Novogratz, author of the New York Times bestseller The Blue Sweater and founder and CEO of Acumen. In 2001, when Jacqueline Novogratz founded Acumen, a global community of socially and environmentally responsible partners dedicated to changing the way the world tackles poverty, few had heard of impact investing—Acumen’s practice of “doing well by doing good.” Nineteen years later, there’s been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses: impact investment is not only morally defensible but now also economically advantageous, even necessary. Still, it isn’t easy to reach a success that includes profits as well as mutually favorable relationships with workers and the communities in which they live. So how can today’s leaders, who often kick off their enterprises with high hopes and short timetables, navigate the challenges of poverty and war, of egos and impatience, which have stymied generations of investors who came before? Drawing on inspiring stories from change-makers around the world and on memories of her own most difficult experiences, Jacqueline divulges the most common leadership mistakes and the mind-sets needed to rise above them. The culmination of thirty years of work developing sustainable solutions for the problems of the poor, Manifesto for a Moral Revolution offers the perspectives necessary for all those—whether ascending the corporate ladder or bringing solar light to rural villages—who seek to leave this world better off than they found it.
Download or read book Hidden Heroism written by Robert Edgerton and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2001-02-08 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible and well-informed tour through a little-known, important aspect of race in American history.
Download or read book Bringing Down the Colonel written by Patricia Miller and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.” In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality—to trial. And, surprisingly, she won. Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand—and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally. Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.
Download or read book A Poem for Peter written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of the extraordinary life of Ezra Jack Keats, creator of The Snowy Day. The story of The Snowy Day begins more than one hundred years ago, when Ezra Jack Keats was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. The family were struggling Polish immigrants, and despite Keats’s obvious talent, his father worried that Ezra’s dream of being an artist was an unrealistic one. But Ezra was determined. By high school he was winning prizes and scholarships. Later, jobs followed with the WPA and Marvel comics. But it was many years before Keats’s greatest dream was realized and he had the opportunity to write and illustrate his own book. For more than two decades, Ezra had kept pinned to his wall a series of photographs of an adorable African American child. In Keats’s hands, the boy morphed into Peter, a boy in a red snowsuit, out enjoying the pristine snow; the book became The Snowy Day, winner of the Caldecott Medal, the first mainstream book to feature an African American child. It was also the first of many books featuring Peter and the children of his — and Keats’s — neighborhood. Andrea Davis Pinkney’s lyrical narrative tells the inspiring story of a boy who pursued a dream, and who, in turn, inspired generations of other dreamers.
