Civil Rights Legislation Research Articles

Lightning Rod Scalawag: The Unlikely Political Career of Thomas Minott Peters

Lightning Rod Scalawag: The Unlikely Political Career of Thomas Minott Peters One of the state Supreme Court justices who became a lightning rod for the political and legal issues of the Reconstruction period , Thomas Minott Peters, presided over the court for only one year (1873–1874) and yet became one of the most hated jurists in Alabama history.1 A notorious scalawag, Peters was routinely vilified in the press for both his “Radical Republican” politics and his decisions that denied the right of secession as a basis for Alabama statute. The events of one hot summer evening in 1878 may help us begin to understand the source of Peters’s unpopularity. On Saturday July 13 Peters delivered a stirring speech at a meeting of Lawrence County’s “colored” Republican convention at Mountain Home. The meeting was observed by a reporter from a Democratic paper with a long record of keeping track of one of the state’s most notorious scalawags. The Moulton Advertiser’s reporter, “Eye-Witness,” paraphrased Peters’s talk to raise the alarm one more time: He made a black republican speech and told them that he was a radical and intended to do a great many radical tricks before he died. He dwelt at length upon Paul Horton Paul Horton teaches history at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. He is indebted to Robert H. McClain Jr., a direct descendant of Thomas M. Peters, for sharing e-mail correspondence and much of his family research. The author would like to thank Colin Rennert-May, Amy Smith-Horton, Mike Fitzgerald, Ed Ayers, Eric Foner, Ed Bridges, and the most kind editors and readers of the Alabama Review for their encouragement and assistance on drafts of this article. 1 Peters plays a pivotal role in two books that are based on oral histories of Unionist northwest Alabama: Donald Dodd and Wynelle S. Dodd, Winston: An Antebellum and Civil War History of a Hill County of North Alabama (Jasper, 1972), 78–123; and Wesley S. Thompson, The Free State of Winston: A History of Winston County, Alabama (Winfield, 1968). According to one local historian, tradition has it that Peters’s library and papers were dumped in a ditch near his home after his house was sold. April 2011 117 the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and said that the 16th Amendment would be the right of suffrage to women. The colored ladies . . . whose modesty he extolled, he said would vote. Seeming to admit, that white ladies would shrink from mingling with a crowd of negroes at the polls. A good Democrat, Eye-Witness had difficulty maintaining even feigned objectivity: “And here the unnatural monster seemed to gloat over the idea of defeating us with women votes, and forever fastening upon the white people of the South the radical yoke.” Peters spoke with “touching pathos” about civil rights and compared civil rights legislation to the “Lord’s prayer.” When “he spoke of Fort Pillow,” where hundreds of African American Federal soldiers from the First Regiment Alabama Siege Artillery had been massacred by troops under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1864, “his remarks were enough to have raised a riot.” Although other African American and white Republicans made credible speeches that day, “none seemed to sanction the demon-like violence of judge Peters.”2 In the minds of Eye-Witness and his Democratic readers, Peters’s threatening rhetoric had to be self-serving. He would compromise all political principles to seek and maintain power. From this perspective the former Unionist was the worst sort of opportunist who betrayed his friends, country, and social class to become Alabama’s highestranking judge. In the words of Bourbon historian John Witherspoon Dubose, “he always avowed intense Union sentiments. He fell into the ranks of the scalawags without a jolt. His attainments as a lawyer were mediocre, insufficient to justify his promotion. When the invading enemy came into the counties along the Tennessee River, he went into their lines to stay, and his conduct naturally increased his claims upon the recognition of the carpetbag element.” Similarly William Garrett, writing in 1872, attributes Peters’s rise to the state supreme court to opportunism: “He was...

Keith M. Finley . Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 . (Making the Modern South.) Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press . 2008 . Pp. 340. $40.00.

This book explores the role that the United States Senate's southern Democratic caucus played in obstructing the achievement of substantive civil rights reform. Keith M. Finley examines all of the rhetorical dimensions of the many arguments marshaled by southern senators against legislation to enact a federal anti-lynching statute, repeal poll taxes, create a permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), end segregation in the South, and protect black voting rights. In this detailed assessment of political rhetoric and the legislative process, Finley finds both diversity within southern white opposition to racial change and continuity in how southern senators tried to slow its momentum. His study broadens our perspective on the civil rights movement, reminding us of the importance of national political events and, ironically, the national democratic process that empowered the southern caucus's program of “strategic delay.” Developed primarily by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, “strategic delay” relied on manipulating Senate rules covering filibustering and cloture to thwart the progress of civil rights legislation from the late 1930s until the mid-1960s. By the 1930s, black voting power outside of the Deep South spurred the realization among members of the southern caucus that civil rights advocates were not going to stop pushing for change no matter how many battles they lost. Continued success in stymieing their program depended upon crafting a lasting coalition across regional and party lines. To attract northern Democrats and conservative Republicans, most southern senators moderated their most venomous racial rhetoric, replacing it with a bevy of legal, constitutional, political, and, upon occasion, even religious arguments. Under Senator Russell's tutelage, the southern caucus also recognized the political utility of compromise. Concessions on smaller, less significant reforms, such as the Soldier Voting Act of 1942, diminished the appearance of knee-jerk obstructionism, earning the goodwill of non-southern senators and making strident opposition to other civil rights legislation more palatable to their colleagues. Softening their racial rhetoric and employing constitutional and political arguments were combined with a masterful manipulation of Senate rules and seniority to become the heart of “strategic delay.” The southern caucus thus hoped to slow the movement for racial reform until it expired from a lack of momentum.

Of Turkey Tetrazzini and George Wallace Buttons: The Experiences of the First Cohort of Africanamericans to Attend a Newly Desegregated Law School

With these interviews I have tried to capture a very small slice of the social reality of ordinary African-Americans with regard to legal education at a formerly segregated, still overwhelmingly white, University, and their role in providing access to legal services to ordinary African-Americans in the first decades after desegregation. We know, given the grossly disproportionate number of African-American men whom our society incarcerates, in what amounts in my mind to a form of de facto slavery and reflects our society's deep-seated paranoia about black men generally, that our legal system remains today, nearly fifty years after major civil rights legislation, deeply hostile to the interests of African-Americans as a class. It requires little imagination to infer the immeasurably greater hostility of a legal system under the control of overtly and unrepentantly racist judges and attorneys. William Randall, now a judge in Macon, Georgia, asserts that he knows of a situation in which a white attorney stated in open court, "this nigger's guilty," regarding an African-American criminal defendant whom he was supposedly representing. Blatant racism aside, this incident also manifestly involved an egregious failure of that attorney to abide by the most elementary principle of an attorney's professional responsibility, to provide the most vigorous and effective possible representation to one's client. Thus we see that, in addition to being inherently grossly immoral, racism also has the undesirable effect of undermining adherence to other, facially unrelated principles that we should hold dear.

Learning Apart, Living Apart: How the Racial and Ethnic Segregation of Schools and Colleges Perpetuates Residential Segregation

BackgroundDespite a powerful civil rights movement and legislation barring discrimination in housing markets, residential neighborhoods remain racially segregated.PurposeThis study examines the extent to which neighborhoods’ racial composition is inherited across generations and the extent to which high schools’ and colleges’ racial composition mediates this relationship. To understand the underlying social processes responsible for racial segregation, I use the spatial assimilation model, the place stratification model, and perpetuation theory.PopulationData for this project are from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), and the U.S. Census.Research DesignA longitudinal design tracks the racial composition of the schools, colleges, and neighborhoods from adolescence through age 26.FindingsHolding constant the percent white in teenagers’ neighborhoods, socioeconomic status, and other variables, the percent white that students experience in high school and college has a lasting influence, affecting the percent white in young adult neighborhoods and explaining 31% of intergenerational continuity of neighborhood racial composition.ConclusionsThe analyses suggest that racial segregation in high schools and colleges reinforces racial segregation in neighborhoods.

Constructing the State Action Doctrine, 1940–1990

According to the state action doctrine, the Constitution restricts the activities of governmental but not private entities. Despite this rule's apparent simplicity, the Supreme Court has been clearly uncomfortable with precedents like Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and has varied considerably in its receptiveness to state action claims from 1940 to 1990. The attitudinal model provides barely a beginning in accounting for both Shelley and changes in state action limitations. While liberal justices did initially relax state action requirements and conservative justices subsequently tightened them, that explanation ignores changes in the NAACP's litigation strategy, the Court's creation of doctrinal alternatives, and powerful civil rights legislation that together produced a sharp decline in state action claims involving race after 1970. These nonattitudinal “regime politics” factors enable a more complete and nuanced understanding of the state action field and help us to see the Court as collaborative rather than independent, dependent, or countermajoritarian.

Changes in law and society during the Civil War and Reconstruction: a legal history documentary reader

This title presents significant legal history documents from a transformative era. The first comprehensive collection of legal history documents from the Civil War and Reconstruction, this volume shows the profound legal changes that occurred during the Civil War era and highlights how law, society, and politics inextricably mixed and set American legal development on particular paths that were not predetermined. Editor Christian G. Samito carefully selected excerpts from legislation, public and legislative debates, and rare court-martial records, adds his expert analysis to clearly present the key facts, and illustrates the selections with telling period artwork to create an outstanding resource that demonstrates the rich and important legal history of the era. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the United States experienced long-lasting and significant constitutional and societal reform. This critical period forced the government and the American people to confront the contours of presidential power and consider the boundaries of civil liberties during wartime. Samito shows how legislation fueled national development, furthered the centralization and expansion of the federal government, revolutionized and nationalized the banking system, and promoted the coercive power of the government as well as its role in taking care of its citizens. The law of slavery gave way to the hard-fought struggle for black equality while Americans struggled over how to implement the egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The materials in this volume demonstrate that legal development is not a story of linear progression. They illuminate themes of fluidity, contingency, and participation, and bring forth the theoretical and personal aspects of the law. Samito focuses on such topics as blacks in the North and South before the Civil War, the expansion of governmental power and the nationalization of the Union, blacks and the U.S. military, President Lincoln's constitutionalism, the expansion of civil rights and opposition to them, and judicial interpretation of the Civil War Amendments and civil rights legislation. The Civil War Amendments and other legislation afforded African Americans national citizenship and began to define some of the rights and practices associated with that status, but, as Samito makes evident, the potential of this reformative moment eroded in the face of Southern white resistance as well as the judicial limitation of the amendments themselves. Nonetheless, the theoretical arguments and practical changes during this era set valuable precedents and influenced future arguments over these same issues. Through this exciting collection, readers will come to understand how the issues of the 1860s are, in many cases, the same issues Americans debate today.

Revisiting the 2001 Riots: New Labour and the Rise of ‘Colour Blind Racism’

Following the Civil Rights legislation enacted in the 1960s in the United States, the notion of ‘colourblind’ racism has emerged within sociological literature. It has been used as a theoretical tool to explain the continuing presence of racism and racialised inequalities within a society where its significance in determining social location is increasingly disavowed. The use of the term has been restricted to those describing the politics of racism in America. However, this paper will consider the applicability of ‘colourblind racism’ to the UK context. The 2001 riots marked an important watershed in ‘race relations’ in Britain. They have been widely cited as marking the point at which New Labour retreated from the celebration of diversity in pursuit of a more monocultural, more ‘cohesive’ society. Through an analysis of the governmental response to the events of summer 2001 it will be suggested that notions of ‘colourblind’ racism can offer interesting insights into the development of the politics of ‘race’ in Britain. Drawing on Bonilla-Silva's (2006) elucidation of the key features of this dominant form of racism in the US, the extent to which these same factors guided New Labour's response will be considered. It will be argued that while it is important to recognize the different patterns of racial formation in the US and the UK, the government reaction to the 2001 riots demonstrates a broad adherence to the key tenets of colourblind racism. This is evident in Labour's failure to effectively engage with racism or the persistence of racial inequality.

Closing the Deal: Negotiating Civil Rights Legislation

Our investigation of the Senate politics of four major civil rights acts indicates that they did not result from winning coalitions bulldozing helpless minorities, nor did they result from some unpredictable chaotic process. These critical bills were the result of a flexible, multidimensional coalition-building process that proceeded by offering amendments carefully constructed to split off pivotal members of the winning coalition. Ideal point estimates of U.S. senators reveal that this coalitional negotiation process led to outcomes at some distance from the first choice of the winning coalition, testimony to significant compromise, both in early proposals and in refinements. This negotiation process resulted in outcomes apparently constrained by the boundaries of the uncovered set (McKelvey 1986; Miller 1980). “Closing the deal” in the U.S. Senate meant finding an outcome that could withstand robust attacks on pivotal coalition members—and that meant finding an outcome in the uncovered set.

Law & Psychiatry: Congress Restores the Americans With Disabilities Act to Its Original Intent.

Law & Psychiatry: Congress Restores the Americans With Disabilities Act to Its Original Intent.

Law & Psychiatry: Congress Restores the Americans With Disabilities Act to Its Original Intent

Law & Psychiatry: Congress Restores the Americans With Disabilities Act to Its Original Intent

Robert Mann, When Freedom Would Triumph: The Civil Rights Struggle in Congress, 1954-1968

Robert Mann, When Freedom Would Triumph: The Civil Rights Struggle in Congress, 1954-1968. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Pp. 318. Paper $19.95. It is with nostalgia that Robert Mann recalls the bipartisan moment in postwar history, when the U.S. Congress finally passed civil rights legislation that was previously thought highly unlikely. As one hero of this moment, Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, has said, Nothing can stop an idea whose time had come. Mann alters this view somewhat. We have the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964 because of the concerted efforts of the Senate's pragmatists and idealists, as well as the political acumen and legislative expertise of a handful of leaders. The required votes for any civil rights legislation or cloture vote was never a given. Although the title of this book suggests coverage of the Voting Rights and Fair Housing Acts, these receive less attention, as does the history of the passage of civil rights legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives. This volume is an abridged version of Mann's earlier book The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights (1996). More than half of the chapters have remained nearly intact, and little new material appears in this edition. What has changed is that Mann has stepped back from featuring the three political leaders explicitly. Johnson, Humphrey, and Russell are still integral this story, but Mann chooses not organize the narrative around them. Their contributions are fundamental, but so were the efforts of others. It would have helped the reader had Mann clearly defined why these men received so much attention earlier and what their collective biographies can tell us about the transformation of the Senate and perhaps by proxy, the nation. While civil rights are of great concern Mann, it is the Senate personalities and the process of negotiation and political maneuvering that most interests him. The Congress as an institution and its rules within the context of passing civil rights legislation receive full and fascinating treatment here. Street protests and mass mobilizations appear in these pages as a backdrop the floor fights and debates in the two chambers. For example, the ongoing prayer vigil at the Lincoln Memorial and the planned Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) stall-in at the World's Fair in the spring of 1964 make brief appearances that inform and inspire members of Congress. Events such as the civil rights protests in Birmingham in 1963 and Selma, Alabama, in 1965 dramatize the need for new legislation, illustrate the battle lines within Congress, and guide its legislative activities. Through his use of a wide range of secondary sources and memoirs, Mann depicts a changing institution from one that adhered the old rules, championed by southern segregationists, into a new, more liberal legislative body. For Mann, Richard Russell, the leader of the conservative southern Democrats, becomes the symbol of the outmoded, outdated Senate. Russell is described as the one who walked between the aisles, as well as through and around them, gathering the votes he needed fight civil rights legislation to the last ditch. …

Factors influencing Circuit Court of Appeals decisions under Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Background The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was a political compromise whose language invited wide interpretation. Many now feel that its promise as significant civil rights legislation has gone unfulfilled. Title I, protecting persons with disabilities against employment discrimination, has been the object of intense scrutiny, leading to speculation that court decisions have made it virtually impossible for plaintiffs to hold employers accountable. We sought to summarize issues surrounding Title I of the ADA and use appellate court data for 1995-2005 to test the following two research questions: What factors appear to influence plaintiff wins under Title I of the ADA? What is the relative importance of factors leading to plaintiff wins? Methods We extracted 345 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals published cases between 1995 and 2005 matching for the West digest topic Civil Rights key number 1215, “Discrimination by reason of handicap, disability or illness.” Cases were analyzed descriptively, and differences between categories of court, plaintiff, and defendant characteristics were analyzed with χ 2 techniques. Using logistic regression, a predictive model for plaintiff wins was developed. Results Overall, 29.3% of court cases found in favor of plaintiffs. Yet findings point to a significant advantage for plaintiffs if litigation is tried in Circuits 2, 3, 9, or 10; if judges are appointed by Democrats; and if suits are filed against large companies. Conclusions Understanding factors that contribute to plaintiff wins is important to help develop policies and practices that promote the intent of the ADA.

Battling the plantation mentality: Memphis and the black freedom struggle

African American is often defined in terms of emancipation and civil rights legislation, but it did not arrive with the stroke of a pen or the rap of a gavel. No single event makes this more plain, Laurie Green argues, than the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike, which culminated in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Exploring the notion of freedom in postwar Memphis, Green demonstrates that the civil rights movement was battling an ongoing plantation mentality based on race, gender, and power that permeated southern culture long before - and even after - the groundbreaking legislation of the mid-1960s. With its slogan I AM a Man!, the Memphis strike provides a clarion example of how the movement fought for a black that consisted of not only constitutional rights but also social and human rights. As the sharecropping system crumbled and migrants streamed to the cities during and after World War II, the struggle for black touched all aspects of daily life. Green traces the movement to new locations, from protests against police brutality and racist movie censorship policies to innovations in mass culture, such as black-oriented radio stations. Incorporating scores of oral histories, Green demonstrates that the interplay of politics, culture, and consciousness is critical to truly understanding and the black struggle for it.

Afterward: Ten Short Years—Acting on Freire's Requests

It's been a short ten years since Paulo Freire died--a ten years that has witnessed 9-11 and George W. Bush's use (with the assistance of his neo-conservative puppet masters) of the tragedy to justify a plethora of fascist oriented changes in U.S. geo-political ambitions, domestic policies, civil and human rights legislation, and, of course, public and private education and curriculum development. It not hard to deduct that Paulo would have hated to witness these regressive changes. Indeed, his unrelenting, transgressive hope would have been challenged. The authors included in this volume have touched on these issues and many more. In this afterward I'd like to think about Paulo's request to always study his work in the context of the new times that would face us and to constantly reinvent his work in our own historical moments. Before getting to that task, I would like to briefly place Freire in historical context. Paulo Freire (1921-1997) With Paulo Freire the notion of critical as we understand it today emerged. Born in Recife, Brazil, in 1921, Freire learned about poverty and oppression through the lives of the impoverished peasants around whom he lived. Such experiences helped construct a devotion to work that would improve the lives of these marginalized people. Beginning his educational work in Recife, Freire became the most well known educator in the world by the 1970s. Peter McLaren (2000) has called Freire the inaugural philosopher of critical pedagogy (p. 1). Indeed, all work in critical after him has to reference his work. His work with the Brazilian poor was viewed as dangerous and subversive by wealthy landowners and the Brazilian military. When the military overthrew the reform government of the country in April of 1964, progressive activities were shut down and Freire was jailed for his insurgent teaching. After serving a 70-day jail term Freire was deported. He continued his pedagogical work in Chile and later under the umbrella of the World Council of Churches throughout the world. Not only have scholars in education employed Freire's work, but individuals working in literary theory, cultural studies, composition, philosophy, research methods, political science, theology, sociology, and other disciplines have used it as well. In this context Freire reconstructed what it means to be an educator, as he upped the ante of what professional educators need to know and do. After Freire a progressive educator cannot be viewed as a technician, a functionary carrying out the instructions of others. Educators in the Freirean sense are learned scholars, community researchers, moral agents, philosophers, cultural workers, and political insurgents. In this context Freire taught us that education is always political and teachers are unavoidably political operatives. Teaching is a political act--there's no way around it. Freire argued that teachers should embrace this dimension of their work and position, social, cultural, economic, political, and philosophical critiques of dominant power at the heart of the curriculum. His notion of critical praxis characterized as informed action demanded curricular and instructional strategies that produced not only better learning climates but a better society as well. Freire used a variety of strategies to produce this ambitious undertaking. In order to help students develop wider conceptual lenses to view their lives and social situation, Freire developed what he called codifications--pictures and photographs as part of a research process directed at the students' social, cultural, political, and economic environment. The pictures in this codification process depicted problems and contradictions in the lived worlds of students. Freire induced the students to step back from these pictures, to think about what they told them about their lives. What are the unseen forces and structures that are at work in these images, covertly shaping what is going on in the areas they depict? …

Forrester Blanchard Washington and His Advocacy for African Americans in the New Deal

Forrester Blanchard Washington (1887-1963) was an African American social work pioneer recruited to the first New Deal administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as director of Negro Work in the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. This role gave Washington a platform from which to object strenuously to the development of social policies that were predisposing African Americans to chronic dependence on welfare programs instead of creating equal opportunities for employment. Washington's policy analysis and recommendations represent social work's advocacy for equal employment opportunity long before the related civil rights legislation in the 1960s. An analysis is offered to explain Washington's decision to abort his federal career when the political agenda of the Roosevelt administration began to conflict with his values and professional goals. His actions are exemplary of resignation in protest--an aspect of advocacy more often discussed than used. This article is based on Washington's writings and materials found in the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland.

Out of the shadows: a biographical history of African American athletes

The original essays in this comprehensive collection examine the lives and sports of famous and not-so- famous African American men and women athletes from the nineteenth century to today. Here are twenty insightful biographies that furnish perspectives on the changing status of these athletes and how the changes mirrored the transformation of sport, American society, and civil rights legislation. Out of the Shadows shows us athletes struggling to make it in a Jim Crow society - Jimmy Winkfield in horse racing, Marshall Taylor in bicycling, William Henry Lewis in football, and Jack Johnson - and those achieving success on an international stage while suffering segregation at home - Ora Washington (tennis), Satchel Paige, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, Alice Coachman (track and field), and Jackie Robinson. In the twentieth century athletes saw opportunities to fight for civil rights through their performances as was the case with Althea Gibson (tennis), Wilma Rudolph, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Arthur Ashe. Today's successful African American athletes, such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Venus and Serena Williams, deal with issues of race and celebrity culture. The contributors to this collection are some of today's best authors of sports history, including Gerald Early, Anthony O. Edmonds, Gerald R. Gems, and Donald Spivey. Together, these biographies not only provide insightful analyses of the athletes' careers, they tell a fascinating two-hundred-year-long story about the complex relationship between race and sport in America and how some gifted individuals achieved success on the playing field despite difficult living conditions and economic circumstances.

Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform Kristen Tegtmeier Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. By Bruce Laurie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 328. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $23.99.) In Beyond Garrison, Bruce Laurie acknowledges the profound influence the Bay State's famous native son had on shaping the abolitionist movement in New England. Laurie urges us, however, to push through Garrison's apolitical "moral dead end" (5) and accept the claim that "politics had meaning and significance extending beyond Garrison" (9). Laurie's detailed study of the roots of antislavery politics in Massachusetts offers historians a fresh interpretation of the demographic and ideological base of the antislavery movement. Perhaps most important, however, he demonstrates how Bay State politicians linked antislavery concerns with other social reforms, such as the ten-hour movement and temperance, and thus strengthened, rather than weakened, the effectiveness of antislavery politics. Ultimately Laurie argues that "political action was an effective strategy consistent with moral rectitude and not a naïve plunge into a smarmy world of compromise and accommodation" (5). Moving beyond Garrison and his allies, Laurie points to men like Elizur Wright and Lewis Hayden and the "ordinary" citizens who fueled political abolitionism as the most successful leaders of Bay State antislavery activism. Laurie charts the evolution of antislavery politics from its origins in evangelical Protestantism and Garrisonian abolitionism to the rise and fall of the Liberty party, the creation of the Free Soil party and its coalition with Democrats, and the beginnings of the Republican party. Through biographical narratives and a thorough examination of voting behavior and demographics, Laurie demonstrates the importance of men "of the country" from "middling families" who embraced the utility of political action. Elizur Wright, Rev. Joshua Leavitt, and William S. Robinson are just a few of the many politicians, journalists, and activists who Laurie unearths from the ashes of Garrisonian abolitionism; he follows their path toward partisan antislavery vehicles like the Liberty party. He also underscores the importance of free blacks like Lewis Hayden and John Swett Rock in pressing white reformers to enact civil rights legislation. Laurie claims that "black activists were emphatically more combative" than whites [End Page 205] in their resistance to segregation and the fugitive slave law and applauds their rejection of the "non-resistance" abolitionism touted by most Garrisonians and politicos alike (253–54). In addition, Laurie makes the trenchant observation that some of the most effective antislavery politicians opposed "all kinds of slavery, wherever it exist[ed]," referring specifically to labor reform in the textile mills but also referencing the efforts of many Bay Staters to liberate their peers from the liquor bottle (147). Laurie shows that by supporting the ten-hour movement in the 1840s and the Maine Law in 1852, the supposed single-issue antislavery parties actually gained support and widened their political base. He also eschews the predominant view that abolitionism's strength was grounded only in middle-class, educated urbanites who lived in Boston. Instead, he finds some of the movement's most radical champions in industrial centers like Lowell, where working women like Sarah Bagley participated in the "cross-fertilization of abolitionism and labor reform" (145). Laurie reveals one of the weaknesses of his study by highlighting Bagley, however. Laurie features Bagley's courageous leadership of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, but Bagley is only one of the numerous reform-minded women who undoubtedly influenced political abolitionism in the 1840s and 1850s. If Bagley could encourage voters to link wage slavery with plantation slavery, as Laurie says she did, then other women like Abby Kelley and Lydia Maria Child certainly held sway with Liberty and Free Soil men in their home state. But Laurie almost wholly neglects women's antislavery activism, an oversight that could have been forgiven had recent studies by Julie Roy Jeffrey (1998), Melanie Gustafson (2001), and Susan Zaeske (2003) not provided numerous examples of how women participated in sectional politics. While it is true that many political abolitionists eschewed the "woman question," it is not the case that antislavery women were wholly divorced from political action. Although Laurie may have underestimated the significance of female politicos, he did provide...

The Gender War in U.S. Sport: Winners and Losers in News Coverage of Title IX

Title IX, the 1972 federal law that guarantees girls and young women access to scholastic sporting opportunities, has been the catalyst for explosive growth in female athletics. Despite evidence that Title IX has opened doors for female athletes without closing them to boys, the law continues to be a source of controversy. This research explores the ways stories in U.S. regional and national newspapers framed Title IX issues between 2002 and 2005, critical years for the civil-rights legislation because of political and legal activity at the national level. Content analysis found that although most stories avoided negative framing devices, stories about the Title IX Commission during 2002 and 2003 more often used negative framing that could perpetuate misunderstanding about the law. Further, paper size, placement of stories and reporter gender were factors in the way stories framed and sourced Title IX coverage. This study points to the need of journalists for a better understanding of the law and its impact on high school and collegiate athletics. Journalists also need to better understand Title IX's relationship with the fiscal hierarchy of collegiate athletics in U.S. universities so “blame the victim” mythology is not reinforced. Journalists should reject patriarchal frames and report about Title IX in ways that benefit public discourse.

Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel Beyond Garrison: Antislavery and Social Reform. By Bruce Laurie. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp 328. Cloth $65.00; paper $23.99.) In Beyond Garrison, Bruce Laurie acknowledges the profound influence the Bay State's famous native son had on shaping the abolitionist movement in New England. However, Laurie urges us to push through Garrison's apolitical "moral dead end" (5) and accept the claim that "Politics had meaning and significance extending beyond Garrison" (9). Laurie's detailed study of the roots and multiple manifestations of antislavery politics in Massachusetts offers historians a fresh interpretation of the demographic and ideological base of the antislavery movement. Perhaps most importantly, however, he demonstrates how Bay State politicians linked antislavery concerns with other social reforms, like the ten-hour movement and temperance, and thus strengthened, rather than weakened, the effectiveness of antislavery politics. Ultimately Laurie argues that "political action was an effective strategy consistent with moral rectitude and not a naïve plunge into a smarmy world of compromise and accommodation" (5). One consequence of the study is to expand the focus from only Garrison and his followers when asking why Massachusetts integrated its common schools in 1855 or why state legislators supported personal liberty laws as early as 1843. Instead, Laurie points to men like Elizur Wright and Lewis Hayden and the "ordinary" men and women who fueled political abolitionism as the most successful leaders of Bay State antislavery activism. Laurie charts the evolution of antislavery politics from its origins in evangelical Protestantism and Garrisonian abolitionism to the rise and fall of the Liberty Party, the creation of the Free Soil party and its coalition with Democrats, and [End Page 100] the beginnings of the Republican party. Through biographical narratives and a thorough examination of voting behavior and demographics, Laurie demonstrates the importance of men "of the country" from "middling families" who embraced the utility of political action. He also highlights the importance of free blacks in pressing white reformers to enact civil rights legislation; he claims that "black activists were emphatically more combative" than white ones in their resistance to segregation and the fugitive slave law and applauds their courage and leadership in their rejection of the "non-resistance" abolitionism touted by most Garrisonians and politicos (253–54). In addition, Laurie makes the trenchant observation that some of the most effective antislavery politicians opposed "all kinds of slavery, wherever it exist[ed]," referring specifically to labor reform in the textile mills but also referencing the efforts of many Bay Staters to liberate their peers from the liquor bottle (147). Laurie shows that by supporting the ten-hour movement in the 1840s and the Maine Law in 1852, the supposed single-issue antislavery parties actually gained support and widened their political base. He also eschews the predominant view that abolitionism's strength was grounded in middle-class urbanites who lived in Boston. Instead, he finds some of the movement's most radical champions in industrial centers like Lowell, where working women like Sarah Bagley participated in the "cross-fertilization of abolitionism and labor reform" (145). Laurie, however, reveals one of the weaknesses of his study by highlighting Bagley. Her story reminds us that women played meaningful roles in the political sphere, even if they could not cast their own ballots. Laurie gives Bagley her historical due as he illustrates her courageous leadership of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association. But Bagley and her Lowell cohorts are only a few of the numerous reform-minded women who undoubtedly influenced political abolitionism in the 1840s and 1850s. If Bagley could encourage voters to link wage slavery with plantation slavery, then other women like Abby Kelley and Lydia Maria Child certainly held sway with Liberty and Free Soil men in their home state. Laurie almost wholly neglects women's antislavery activism, an oversight that could have been forgiven if recent studies by Julie Roy Jeffrey (1998), Melanie Gustafson (2001), and Susan Zaeske (2003) had not provided numerous examples of how women participated in sectional politics. While it is true that many political abolitionists eschewed the "woman question," believing it to be outside the...

In Retrospect: Landmark Law Cases in American Society

In Retrospect:Landmark Law Cases in American Society Eric Rauchway (bio) The University Press of Kansas series, "Landmark Law Cases and American Society," edited by Peter Charles Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, puts its authors in a potentially awkward position. Any case that qualifies as a "landmark case," with an obvious and vital connection to American society, is going to be what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., called a "great case." The series therefore risks focusing on what Holmes called "bad law. Great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment."1 To the non-lawyer, this prospect comes as something of a relief. Bad law is the stuff of good political and social history.2 And for the most part, the "Landmark Law Cases" authors de-emphasize jurisprudence and err on the side of showing us and our students how great cases entail moral, social, and political conflict. In the main, the series treats judges, especially the justices of the United States Supreme Court, as a special breed of political actors, in keeping with the explanation of the Court's role offered in Thurman Arnold's 1937 Folklore of Capitalism: the Supreme Court was the greatest unifying symbol in American government. Here was the one body which could still the constant debate, and represent to the country the ideal of government of fundamental principles. On this Court the whole idea of a government of laws and not of the competing opinions of men appeared to depend. Here only was there a breathing spell from the continual din of arguments about governmental philosophy which were never settled.3 So high had the Justices climbed in the American civic pantheon that, in the same year, Franklin D. Roosevelt caused a reasonably genuine scandal when he proposed augmenting the Court for political reasons—a scandal that stood in stark contrast to the equanimity that greeted Congress's fiddling with the Court's numbers only seventy years before.4 Sometime by 1937, in a shift perhaps more important than the "switch in time," the Court had become an institution worth its marble temple, with special access to fundamental principles: a "bulwark of individual rights and personal dignity," as Hoffer, Hull, [End Page 155] and Williamjames Hoffer write in their own overview of the Court's history, a bulwark anchored, as Arnold would say, in an ability to resolve disputes by appeal to fundamental principle.5 As such it occupies an important place in the American political process—a reluctant but definite decision-maker of last resort. The series volumes that work best show the judiciary playing this role. Sometimes great social conflicts sluice through the channels of our institutions and finally funnel into legal chambers, taking a course that offers a superb opportunity to exhibit and examine the relation between great cases and American society. The book on Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution, by Robert J. Cottrol, Raymond T. Diamond, and Leland B. Ware, takes advantage of this opportunity. Brown brought the long struggle for school desegregation to the Court, which consented, however grumpily, to take up the cause. As Justice Robert Jackson remarked during oral argument, "I suppose that realistically the reason this case is here is that action couldn't be obtained in Congress." In his unpublished opinion, Jackson went on to say that the Court thus found itself in the awkward position of having to explain "that the Constitution this morning forbids what for three-quarters of a century it has tolerated or approved."6 Cottrol, Diamond and Ware note the Court's culpability in creating this difficulty for itself. Beginning their analysis a century before Brown, with cases that created a caste status based on color for African Americans, they point out that the country adopted the Civil War Amendments the Constitution to break that caste. Most important was the Fourteenth Amendment, in which its framers provided Constitutional authorization for contemporaneously passed "far-reaching federal civil rights legislation, legislation designed to protect the newly freed...