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In the late 1860s the U.S. federal government initiated the most
abrupt transition from slavery to citizenship in the Americas. The
transformation, of course, did not stick, but it did permanently
alter the terms of American citizenship and initiated a century
long struggle over the place of African Americans in the American
polity. Southern Progressives, crucial in this account, were faced
with a significant ideological challenge: how to reconcile their
liberal principles with their commitments to racial hierarchy. The
ideological work performed by Southern Progressives was
instrumental to the establishment of white supremacist institutions
in the heart of a putatively liberal democracy and illuminate how
combinations of liberal and illiberal principles have affected the
history of American political thought. In this work, Marek Steedman
demonstrates how Southern Progressives combined commitments to
liberal, even democratic, politics with equally strong commitments
to the maintenance of racial hierarchy. He shows that there are
systematic features of the traditions of liberal and republican
thought, on the one hand, and ideologies of race, on the other,
that facilitate their combination. Jim Crow Citizenship relates
familiar developments in American state-building, legal
development, and political thought to race, thus showing how race
intertwines with these developments, often shaping them in decisive
fashion.
This book traces the transformation of slaves into subordinate
citizens in the U.S. South, in order to reassess the relation
between race and republican and liberal accounts of citizenship in
America. In the late 1860s the U.S. federal government initiated
the most abrupt transition from slavery to citizenship in the
Americas. The transformation, of course, did not stick, but it did
permanently alter the terms of American citizenship and initiated a
century long struggle over the place of African Americans in the
American polity. Southern Progressives, crucial in this account,
were faced with a significant ideological challenge: how to
reconcile their liberal principles with their commitments to racial
hierarchy. The ideological work performed by Southern Progressives
was instrumental to the establishment of white supremacist
institutions in the heart of a putatively liberal democracy and
illuminate how combinations of liberal and illiberal principles
have affected the history of American political thought. Steedman
demonstrates how Southern Progressives combined commitments to
liberal, even democratic, politics with equally strong commitments
to the maintenance of racial hierarchy. He shows that there are
systematic features of the traditions of liberal and republican
thought, on the one hand, and ideologies of race, on the other,
that facilitate their combination. Jim Crow Citizenship relates
familiar developments in American state-building, legal
development, and political thought to race, thus showing how race
intertwines with these developments, often shaping them in decisive
fashion.
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