During the four decades separating the death of Martin Luther King and the election of Barack Obama, the meaning of civil rights became increasingly complex. Civil rights leaders made great strides in breaking down once-impermeable racial barriers, but they also suffered many political setbacks in their attempts to remedy centuries of discrimination. Complicating matters, the conservative turn in American political life transformed the national conversation about race and civil rights in surprising ways.
This pioneering collection of essays explores the paradoxical nature of civil rights politics in the years following the 1960s civil rights movement by chronicling the ways in which presidential politics both advanced and constrained the quest for racial equality in the United States.
About the Author :
Kenneth Osgood, director of the McBride Honors Program in Public Affairs at the Colorado School of Mines, is coauthor of Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century. Derrick E. White, visiting associate professor of history at Dartmouth College, is the author of The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s.
Contributors: Kenneth Osgood Derrick White Mary Frances Berry Tim Borstelmann Steven F. Lawson Richard L. Pacell Jr. John D. Skrentny Robert C. Smith Ronald W. "Ron" Walters Charles Zelden
Review :
"Explor[es] the paradoxical nature of racial politics in the post-civil rights period. . . . Does us the service of detailing how different presidential administrations handled civil rights, complicating our understanding of the major themes that defined the era."--American Historical Review
"Adds depth to our historical understanding of how various presidents and their administrations approached issues pertaining to the equal rights of black (and to a lesser extent, Hispanic) Americans in a number of institutional and legislative arenas."--Journal of American History
"Expertly link[s] executive decision-making and electoral strategizing with the politics of civil rights."--Journal of American Studies
"Examines the forward and backward movement of civil rights since the resurgence of conservative politics in 1968. . . . Welcome and helpful."--Journal of Southern History
"An invaluable addition to the rapidly developing historiography of neoconservativism, particularly the ideology's relationship with African Americans."--Louisiana History
"A striking example of a successful meshing of historical and political science methodologies and scholarship."--North Carolina Historical Review
