It was 1862, the second year of the Civil War, though Kansans and Missourians had been fighting over slavery for almost a decade. For the 250 Union soldiers facing down rebel irregulars on Enoch Toothman's farm near Butler, Missouri, this was no battle over abstract principles. These were men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and they were fighting for their own freedom and that of their families. They belonged to the first black regiment raised in a northern state, and the first black unit to see combat during the Civil War. "Soldiers in the Army of Freedom" is the first published account of this largely forgotten regiment and, in particular, its contribution to Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War. As such, it restores the First Kansas Colored Infantry to its rightful place in American history.
Composed primarily of former slaves, the First Kansas Colored saw major combat in Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. Ian Michael Spurgeon draws upon a wealth of little-known sources--including soldiers' pension applications--to chart the intersection of race and military service, and to reveal the regiment's role in countering white prejudices by defying stereotypes. Despite naysayers' bigoted predictions--and a merciless slaughter at the Battle of Poison Spring--these black soldiers proved themselves as capable as their white counterparts, and so helped shape the evolving attitudes of leading politicians, such as Kansas senator James Henry Lane and President Abraham Lincoln. A long-overdue reconstruction of the regiment's remarkable combat record, Spurgeon's book brings to life the men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry in their doubly desperate battle against the Confederate forces and skepticism within Union ranks.

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

Becoming a Model Minority: Schooling Experiences of Ethnic Koreans in China looks at the manner in which ethnic Korean students construct self-perception out of the model minority stereotype in their school and lives in Northeast China. It also examines how this self-perception impacts the strength of the model minority stereotype in their attitudes toward school and strategies for success. Fang Gao shows how this stereotype tends to obscure significant barriers to scholastic success suffered by Korean students, as well as how it silences the disadvantages faced by Korean schooling in China's reform period and neglects the importance of multiculturalism and racial equality under the context of a harmonious society.

Jesse Olsavsky's The Most Absolute Abolition tells the dramatic story of how vigilance committees organized the Underground Railroad and revolutionized the abolitionist movement. These groups, based primarily in northeastern cities, defended Black neighborhoods from police and slave catchers. As the urban wing of the Underground Railroad, they helped as many as ten thousand refugees, building an elaborate network of like-minded sympathizers across boundaries of nation, gender, race, and class. Olsavsky reveals how the committees cultivated a movement of ideas animated by a motley assortment of agitators and intellectuals, including famous figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Henry David Thoreau, who shared critical information with one another. Formerly enslaved runaways-who grasped the economy of slavery, developed their own political imaginations, and communicated strategies of resistance to abolitionists-serve as the book's central focus. The dialogues between fugitives and abolitionists further radicalized the latter's tactics and inspired novel forms of feminism, prison reform, and utopian constructs. These notions transformed abolitionism into a revolutionary movement, one at the heart of the crises that culminated in the Civil War.

No Prejudice Here chronicles a heretofore untold story of civil rights in modern America. In embracing the Western urban experience, it relates the struggle for civil rights and school desegregation in Denver, Colorado. It chronicles early legislative and political trends to promote Denver as a racially tolerant city, which encouraged African-Americans to move to the urban center for opportunities unique to communities in the postwar American West while nonetheless trying to maintain segregation by limiting educational and employment opportunities for minorities. Dynamic historian Summer Cherland recounts this tension over six decades, with specific attention to the role of community control efforts, legislative and political strategies, and the importance of youth activism. Her insightful study provides an overview of the seminar 1974 Supreme Court case Keyes v. Denver Public Schools No. 1, and traces the community's reaction to court decisions until the city was released from federal oversight twenty years later. Cherland's book proves that civil rights activism, and the need for it, lasted well beyond the years that typically define the civil rights movement, and illustrates for our contemporary consideration the longstanding struggle in urban communities for justice and equality.

In a beautiful and poetic reflection, Ruby Bridges tells her story as never before and shares the events of the momentous day in 1960 when Ruby became the first child to integrate the school system as a six year old little girl -- a personal and intimate look through a child's lens at a landmark moment in our Civil Rights history. My work will be precious, I will be a bridge between people. I will bridge the "gap" between black & white. . but hopefully all people! I suppose some things in life are just meant to be. When Ruby Bridges was just six years old, she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South. Based on the pivotal events that happened in 1960 and told from her own point of view for the first time, in a poetic reflection on her experience that changed the face of history and the trajectory of the Civil Rights movement. I Am Ruby Bridges offers hope and confidence to all children and is a perfect learning tool for schools and libraries to teach the story of Ruby Bridges as never before and introducing this landmark story to young readers in a powerful new way. This story of innocence and courage is brought to life by NAACP-nominated artist, Nikkolas Smith through stunning and beautiful illustrations.Embracing the meaning of her name, Bridges reflects with poignancy and heart on the way one brave little girl stood proud and tall to help build a bridge between all people and pave the path for future generations.

The Proper Criticism of Some Decent People A Candid, Unblinking, Unapologetic, Uncompromising Look at the Leadership Crisis in Black America and the Impact on the Leadership of America By Dr. Theophilus Green _____________________________________________ "None of us are born with prejudice. It is not a human response or reaction that comes naturally. Yet, it is a practice that has persisted for nearly five hundred years in what is now the United States of America." With those words, Chicago psychologist Dr. Theophilus Green begins an unflinching analysis of virtually every major luminary to influence American civil rights in the last fifty years. With uncommon results: On O.J. Simpson: L.A. police on the scene may have been confused about the identity of the murderer because blood is red and O.J. is black. But not the psychologists. The reason? They each asked themselves the same question. Who would know Nicole had breast implants, and who would take time to destroy them, -but the guy who paid for them? On Black women: The fully Americanized black woman is a willful, dominating, colorful, controlling, unique mixture of female. You should read that as a compliment, not an editorial. You should also consider it fair warning. On Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun: Ultimately, finally and unfortunately, Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun was always alone. Top the heap, queen of the roost, best seat in the best game in town. She was also the poster woman for every black woman in America. No man, no strong family, no strong support group, surrounded by manipulators, schemers and cons. It's a wonder she survived it at all. On Rev. Jesse Jackson: It is embarrassing to later discover that Rev. Jackson's real motive for going to Washington to counsel the President may have been the opportunity to go skipping down the hotel halls to play with his own girlfriend, who was unlike Lewinsky, pregnant. On Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley: Say what you want about the Mayor of Chicago, his abuse of privilege, the under the table contracts, the investigations that never seem to result in indictments. He can't pronounce the language and only plays fair for a fare. But you have to give the man his due. He takes second to no one in raising a man. Stand up and give the family just applause. His son Patrick Daley is a man for all the right reasons. ("Well done, young man, well done.") Well done, indeed. "Thank you for the monograph. Interesting and Provocative" Colin Powell U.S. Secretary of State "The most important book for every black child in the 21st century." Elmira Mayes, Founder, Director, Loop Lab School "I never thought I would ever read a book that would admit that the Catholic church celibacy hypocrisy breeds pedophiles." Robert Knight, Chairman, Committee to Seek Redress Justice for Children of Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse

This one-volume reference work examines a broad range of topics related to the establishment, maintenance, and eventual dismantling of the discriminatory system known as Jim Crow. Many Americans imagine that African Americans' struggle to achieve equal rights has advanced in a linear fashion from the end of slavery until the present. In reality, for more than six decades, African Americans had their civil rights and basic human rights systematically denied in much of the nation. Jim Crow: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic sheds new light on how the systematic denigration of African Americans after slavery-known collectively as "Jim Crow"-was established, maintained, and eventually dismantled. Written in a manner appropriate for high school and junior high students as well as undergraduate readers, this book examines the period of Jim Crow after slavery that is often overlooked in American history curricula. An introductory essay frames the work and explains the significance and scope of this regrettable period in American history. Written by experts in their fields, the accessible entries will enable readers to understand the long hard road before the inception of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century while also gaining a better understanding of the experiences of minorities in the United States-African Americans, in particular. Provides a one-stop source of information for students researching the period of American history dominated by the discriminatory system of Jim Crow laws Puts phenomena such as "Sundown towns" within a larger framework of official discrimination Documents the methods used to create, maintain, and dismantle Jim Crow

Detailed profiles bring stories of African American heroism in the U.S. armed forces to life, from the American Revolution through the conflict in Afghanistan. African American war heroes remain largely unsung, their courage and valor relegated to the less traveled corners of history. This work seeks out those heroes-soldiers, sailors, flyers, and marines-who earned their nation's highest medals in defense of freedom and equality. Some of these men and women died on the battlefield. Others returned to civilian life in a segregated country. What they share across time and circumstance is devotion to duty and to the country they defended, even in the face of personal and racial prejudice. Entries profile decorated African Americans from all of the U.S. conflicts since the Revolutionary War. In addition to providing basic biographical data, each profile offers a detailed account of the individual's heroic actions. The book also offers sidebars on events and topics relevant to African Americans in the U.S. armed forces, such as histories of the 54th Massachusetts and the Tuskegee Airmen. Shares 80 detailed biographies of African Americans who earned their nation's highest medals for valor Covers both well-known and more obscure individuals throughout U.S. military history Offers 10 sidebars on important African American segregated units and critical events pertaining to African American participation in the military Includes an introductory essay to provide a conceptual framework for students Features a fact box at the top of each entry to provide at-a-glance information about the recipient and his/her award(s)

When asked to name the first ""militant"" Black characters in film, we might imagine Blaxploitation heroes like Sweetback or Shaft. Yet, as this groundbreaking new book shows, there was a much earlier cycle of films featuring militant Black men - many of which were sponsored by the U.S. government. Militant Visions examines how, from the 1940s to the 1970s, the cinematic figure of the black soldier helped change the ways American moviegoers saw Black men, for the first time presenting African Americans as vital and integrated members of the nation. Elizabeth Reich traces the figure across a wide variety of movie genres, from action blockbusters like Bataan to patriotic musicals like Stormy Weather. In the process, she reveals how the image of the proud and powerful African American serviceman was crafted by an unexpected alliance of government propagandists, civil rights activists, and Black filmmakers. Offering a nuanced reading of a figure that was simultaneously conservative and radical, Reich considers how the cinematic Black soldier lent a human face to ongoing debates about racial integration, Black internationalism, and American militarism. She reads the Black soldier in film as inherently transnational, shaped by the displacements of diaspora, Third World revolutionary philosophy, and a legacy of Black artistry and performance. Militant Visions thus not only presents a new history of how American cinema represented race, it also demonstrates how film images helped to make history, shaping the progress of the civil rights movement itself.