Alienable rights : the exclusion of African Americans in a white man's land, 1619-2000
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Alienable rights : the exclusion of African Americans in a white man's land, 1619-2000
HarperCollins, c2003
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. [349]-356
Index: p. [357]-368
Description and Table of Contents
Description
<p>In a devastating narrative that spans more than three centuries, from colonial times to the present day, "Alienable Rights" reveals how whites have excluded blacks from virtually every area of American life, denying them full citizenship and equality. <p>Brought to America early in the seventeenth century, the first slaves were treated in much the same way as indentured white servants who had come from England. After only a few years, however, whites ostracized blacks, who were viewed as an inferior race, and passed laws making their enslavement permanent, denying even free blacks the most basic rights enjoyed by whites. Though many slaves fought honorably in the Revolutionary War, earning their freedom, the Constitution (1787) sanctioned slavery, making it -- in the words of one of the signers -- the document's "most prominent feature." Three years later, Congress passed the nation's first naturalization act, limiting citizenship to "free white persons" only. <p>Throughout the country, a popular colonization movement developed, attracting whites who hoped to make the United States a purely white nation by transporting all blacks to Africa or the Caribbean. Though the Civil War ended slavery, the subsequent congressional attempt to remake southern society during Reconstruction failed because whites in both the North and the South were unwilling to accept blacks as equals, with the same rights to vote, to attend school, and to move freely throughout American society. Instead, the Supreme Court approved the subterfuge of "separate but equal," which allowed state governments to maintain racial segregation by providing blacks with inferior institutions of their own. <p>The "Jim Crow" system was overturned by the civil rights movement that followed World War II, but much of the progress of the 1960s and 1970s was blunted by an angry backlash in the 1980s. <p>The authors contend that the drive for African American equality has never had the support of the majority of white Americans. Racial progress has come in brief historical bursts when a committed militant minority -- abolitionists, radical Republicans, civil rights activists -- stirred the nation to action, pressuring it to change; but, invariably, advances have been followed by concerted efforts to restore white privilege.
by "Nielsen BookData"