South Carolina's Indian-American governor Nikki Haley recently dismissed one of her principal advisors when his membership to the ultra-conservative Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) came to light. Among the CCC's many concerns is intermarriage and race mixing. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2001 the CCC website included a message that read "God is the one who divided mankind into different races.... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God. " Beyond the irony of a CCC member working for an Indian-American, the episode reveals America's continuing struggle with race, racial integration, and race mixing. The Color Factor shows that the emergent twenty-first-century recognition of race mixing and the relative advantages of light-skinned, mixed-race people represents a "back to the future " moment--a re-emergence of one salient feature of race in America that dates to its founding. Each chapter addresses from a historical perspective a topic in the current literature on mixed-race and color. The approach is economic and empirical, but the text is accessible to social scientists more generally. The historical evidence concludes that we will not really understand race until we understand how American attitudes toward race were shaped by race mixing.

The nineteenth-century middle-class ideal of the married woman was of a chaste and diligent wife focused on being a loving mother, with few needs or rights of her own. The modern woman, by contrast, was partner to a new model of marriage, one in which she and her husband formed a relationship based on greater sexual and psychological equality. In Making Marriage Modern, Christina Simmons narrates the development of this new companionate marriage ideal, which took hold in the early twentieth century and prevailed in American society by the 1940s.
The first challenges to public reticence to discuss sexual relations between husbands and wives came from social hygiene reformers, who advocated for a scientific but conservative sex education to combat prostitution and venereal disease. A more radical group of feminists, anarchists, and bohemians opposed the Victorian model of marriage and even the institution of marriage. Birth control advocates such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger openly championed women's rights to acquire and use effective contraception. The "companionate marriage" emerged from these efforts. This marital ideal was characterized by greater emotional and sexuality intimacy for both men and women, use of birth control to create smaller families, and destigmatization of divorce in cases of failed unions. Simmons examines what she calls the "flapper" marriage, in which free-spirited young wives enjoyed the early years of marriage, postponing children and domesticity. She looks at the feminist marriage in which women imagined greater equality between the sexes in domestic and paid work and sex. And she explores the African American "partnership marriage," which often included wives' employment and drew more heavily on the involvement of the community and extended family. Finally, she traces how these modern ideals of marriage were promoted in sexual advice literature and marriage manuals of the period.
Though male dominance persisted in companionate marriages, Christina Simmons shows how they called for greater independence and satisfaction for women and a new female heterosexuality. By raising women's expectations of marriage, the companionate ideal also contained within it the seeds of second-wave feminists' demands for transforming the institution into one of true equality between the sexes.

This book provides new and exciting interpretations of Helen Keller's unparalleled life as "the most famous American woman in the world" during her time, celebrating the 141st anniversary of her birth. Helen Keller: A Life in American History explores Keller's life, career as a lobbyist, and experiences as a deaf-blind woman within the context of her relationship with teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy and overarching social history. The book tells the dual story of a pair struggling with respective disabilities and financial hardship and the oppressive societal expectations set for women during Keller's lifetime. This narrative is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Helen Keller's role in the development of support services specifically related to the deaf-blind, as delineated as different from the blind. Readers will learn about Keller's challenges and choices as well as how her public image often eclipsed her personal desires to live independently. Keller's deaf-blindness and hard-earned but limited speech did not define her as a human being as she explored the world of ideas and wove those ideas into her writing, lobbying for funds for the American Federation for the Blind and working with disabled activists and supporters to bring about practical help during times of tremendous societal change. Presents well-researched, factual material in an easy-to-understand writing style about a complex, iconic American woman, Helen Keller, who inspired generations of people worldwide because of her lifelong quest for knowledge and her ability to communicate ideas despite being deaf-blind Humanizes and demonstrates the diversity of the deaf-blind community, which has historically been the smallest minority in the United States at less than 1% of the population Positions Keller in the panorama of American history, economics, politics, and popular culture, challenging the existing narrative created by her teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy Re-envisions Keller within the world of ideas where she experienced and expressed individuality through dialogs constructed from her writings and the work of those who informed her thinking Includes 10 images that provide an intimate look into Keller's personal and public life

In 1923, Kansas governor Johnathan Davis traveled to Hutchinson to dedicate Emerson Careyas new rock salt mine whose shaft provided access to an ancient salt bed 650 feet under the earthas surface. The Carey Salt Mine, advertised as athe most modern in the world, a served as a companion to Careyas already-existing evaporation plants. Miners used the newest technology to blast and crush the mineral into gravel and haul it to the surface to provide rock salt for livestock, industries, and roads. Throughout the 20th century, thousands visited Careyas mining operations. Ever since the day Governor Davis presided over the opening ceremony, the Carey Salt Mine has served as a landmark for Hutchinson and helped shape its identity as athe Salt City.a

In this one-of-a-kind collection, Dr. James C. Claypool, professor emeritus at Northern Kentucky University, rolls out the red carpet for thirty-nine of the most fascinating characters with ties to the commonwealth. From intrepid pioneers to noble statesmen, legendary athletes, inventors, entrepreneurs, war heroes and a couple of men named Cassius Clay, this is a comprehensive and highly entertaining volume that no true Kentuckian should be without. Some will make you proud, others may leave you in shame, but good or bad, noble or vile, they are still our fellow Kentuckians.

Electric streetcars and interurbans appeared in Washtenaw County in the 1890s. Evolved from horse-drawn streetcars, electric cars were ideal for public transportation. They were cheap, fast, and went to plenty of places. The system developed around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, branching out to Detroit to the east and Jackson to the west. Bigger and better equipment was added, and larger companies took over the small ones. In western Washtenaw County, two interurban railways engaged in a struggle for survival. Occasionally the interurbans crashed into buildings or one another, with disastrous results. Electric Trolleys of Washtenaw County explains how electric mass transportation flourished starting in the 1890s, why it bloomed, and why it suddenly became extinct after only a few decades.

The Vermont-Quebec Border: Life on the Line is a visual record of life in the villages, towns, and countryside in this unique and special part of the world. In recent years, issues relating to the border have been thrust to the forefront as never before. This is due not only to growing security concerns but also to an increasing scrutiny in the media of border issues and of how heightened security is impacting life in communities all along the border. The border has played an important role in the history and everyday lives of the people living along its length, both in Vermont and Quebec, and it will undoubtedly continue to shape these communities in the years to come.