States Rights

In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women’s all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism, as Bell vividly captures their inspiring voices. Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers these deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change, stories that remain important and relevant today.

Delve into the remarkable life of First Sergeant Robert Pinn in "First Sergeant Robert Pinn: Valor Beyond Battlefields — The Untold Story of a Civil War Hero and Civil Rights Pioneer." This compelling biography charts the journey of an extraordinary individual who was born into bondage, fought courageously in the Civil War, and emerged as a steadfast advocate for civil rights and veterans. From the shackles of slavery in Stark County, Ohio, to the hallowed grounds of freedom, Pinn's early life was marked by a relentless pursuit of liberty. His decision to join the Union Army as part of ...

Why have White supremacists and Black activists been so focused on Black mobility? From Plessy v. Ferguson to #DrivingWhileBlack, African Americans have fought for over a century to move freely around the United States. Curious as to why so many cases contesting the doctrine of "separate but equal" involved trains and buses, Mia Bay went back to the sources with some basic questions: How did travel segregation begin?

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

In this brilliantly analytical yet personal book, nondemocratic societies are put under a microscope to reveal the mechanics of tyranny that sustain them. In exposing the inner workings of a "fear society", the authors explain why democracy is not beyond any nation's reach, why it is essential for our security, and why there is much that can be done to promote it around the world.

As a former three-term U.S. Republican senator from Missouri and an ordained Episcopal priest, John C. Danforth has watched the shifts in his party and the Christian church with growing alarm. Now he feels the time has come for a change.

Though they may seem to be dividing the country irreparably, today's heated cultural and political battles between right and left, progressives and the Tea Party, religious and secular are far from unprecedented. In this engaging and important work, Stephen Prothero reframes the current debate, viewing it as the latest in a number of flashpoints that have shaped our national identity.

Are you curious to learn what happened after the US Civil War? Then dive into the captivating history of the Reconstruction Era! The US Civil War brought about a lot of change. The nation not only had to figure out how to become united once again, but it also had to figure out how to integrate the newly freed slaves into society. In addition, the country had to figure out how to recover from the war, which devastated the South and took many lives on both sides.

The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson.

In this well-rounded, deeply investigated biography, the first full look at the vice president, two award-winning journalists unmask the real Mike Pence. In this landmark biography, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael D’Antonio and Emmy-nominated journalist Peter Eisner follow the path Pence followed from Catholic Democrat to conservative evangelical Republican. As The Shadow President reveals, Mike Pence is the most important and powerful Christian right politician America has ever seen.

African Americans have had every reason to doubt America’s democratic experiment. Yet African American activists, intellectuals, and artists who have sought to transform the United States into a racially just society have put forward some of the most original and powerful ideas about how to make America live up to its democratic ideals. In The Darkened Light of Faith, Melvin Rogers provides a bold new account of African American political thought through the works and lives of individuals who built this vital tradition, which is urgently needed today.

In The Grouchy Historian, Ed Asner leads the charge for liberals to reclaim the Constitution from the right-wingers who use it as their justification for doing whatever terrible thing they want to do, which is usually to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It's about time someone gave them hell and explained that Progressives can read, too.

One of the most notorious crimes during the Civil Rights Movement was the murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in June 1964. Occurring less than two weeks before the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, the young volunteers were killed because they had come south to help register blacks to vote, a right they had been unfairly denied for over half a century thanks to Jim Crow. The shocking nature of the crimes galvanized people and helped bring about the kinds of changes the murderers sought to prevent.

Are you tired of the fractured nature of our society, the labels, the bickering, the inability to have civil conversations with those of varying viewpoints. Maybe you’ve had your fill of pundits who shout over each other instead of treating each other with respect and engaging in intelligent conversations. As we rapidly splinter into factions, the odds of ever crafting solutions in this nation diminishes. You're probably sensing that with all our anger, shaming, victimhood and name-calling we’re losing something precious – our freedom to think, believe, and speak our own minds. Most ...

America is broken. America is divided. 80% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. And everything you need to know about the Divided States of America can be explained by two relentless forces: hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism. American Restraint explores how both hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism are what is fundamentally ripping our country apart. Traditional solutions and status quo politicians can’t help us.

Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society and Chinese surveillance systems, uncovers how a vast network of technology provided by private companies - facial surveillance, voice recognition, smartphone data - enabled the state and corporations to blacklist millions of Uyghurs because of their religious and cultural practice starting in 2017.

Can you describe America’s founding principles? Thomas Jefferson said America’s founding principles “should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the service of those we trust.” He added, “should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.” Can you name America’s most influential founders? For many, the first people that come to mind are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. To be sure, ...

In 1765, 11 years before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson bought a Qur'an. This marked only the beginning of his lifelong interest in Islam, and he would go on to acquire numerous books on Middle Eastern languages, history, and travel, taking extensive notes on Islam as it relates to English common law. Jefferson sought to understand Islam notwithstanding his personal disdain for the faith, a sentiment prevalent among his Protestant contemporaries in England and America.

In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, countless Black citizens endured violent resistance and even death while fighting for their constitutional rights. One of those citizens, Clyde Kennard, a Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attempted repeatedly to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College in the late 1950s. In A Slow, Calculated Lynching, Devery S. Anderson tells the story of a man who paid the ultimate price for trying to attend a white college during Jim Crow.

Being Black in America is not an easy task. Black people in America are faced with the task of surviving in a system predicated on the notion that Black people were less than human, policed and enforced by a system that is rooted in slavery and racism. All while trying to succeed in a capitalist society where we are discriminated against.