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How To Be An Antiracist: Book Discussion Series
Library staff professional development DEI book discussion
An American Dilemma: The Negro problem and modern democracy by Gunnar MyrdalIn this landmark effort to understand African American people in the New World, Gunnar Myrdal provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The title of the book, 'An American Dilemma', refers to the moral contradiction of a nation torn between allegiance to its highest ideals and awareness of the base realities of racial discrimination. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks. The appendices are a gold mine of information, theory, and methodology. Indeed, two of the appendices were issued as a separate work given their importance for systematic theory in social research. The new introduction by Sissela Bok offers a remarkably intimate yet rigorously objective appraisal of Myrdal--a social scientist who wanted to see himself as an analytic intellectual, yet had an unbending desire to bring about change. 'An American Dilemma' is testimonial to the man as well as the ideas he espoused. When it first appeared 'An American Dilemma' was called "the most penetrating and important book on contemporary American civilization" by Robert S. Lynd; "One of the best political commentaries on American life that has ever been written" in The American Political Science Review; and a book with "a novelty and a courage seldom found in American discussions either of our total society or of the part which the Negro plays in it" in 'The American Sociological Review'. It is a foundation work for all those concerned with the history and current status of race relations in the United States.
Call Number: E185.6 M997a, 1962
ISBN: 1560008563
Publication Date: 1995-01-30
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy by Mary L. DudziakIn 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Fost
Call Number: Available as an ebook
ISBN: 1282303813
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson by Jo Ann Gibson Robinson; David O. Garrow (Editor, Foreword by)The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, has always been vitally important in southern and black history. With the publication of this book, the boycott becomes a milestone in the history of American women as well. "This autobiographical account of the creation of the boycott is the most important document on that highly significant episode since Martin Luther King's own version, Stride Towards Freedom. I feel certain that scholars and students will refer to this unique historical source for generations to come." --J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan "This valuable first-hand account of the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott, written by an important, behind-the-scenes organizer, evokes the emotional intensity of the civil rights struggle. It ought to be required reading for all Americans who value their freedom and the contribution of black women to our history." --Coretta Scott King "A sharply remembered addition to the literature on what has become an event of mythic proportions, and a sound primer for those interested in community organizing. The author is scrupulously honest, modest, and gives unsung heroes much deserved praise." --Kirkus "This fascinating memoir provides new evidence on the origins and sustaining force of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56)." --Anthony O. Edmonds, Library Journal "There's no substitute for this intimate memoir; it provides an immediacy and graphic intensity never before available." --Marge Frantz, San Jose Mercury News "This powerful memoir is a milestone in the history of that boycott and in the American Civil Rights Movement." --American History Illustrated "This absorbing study may become a minor classic in the literature of the Montgomery bus boycott. . . . Garrow correctly states in his Foreword that this book is the most important participant-observer account of the Montgomery protest available to students and scholars of the black freedom movement. . . . This straightforward, sensitive memoir is must reading for students of the civil rights movement. It is a powerful commentary on how a woman and the group she led rose up to throw off an injustice thrust upon them. When Jo Ann Robinson and other Montgomery women decided no longer to play the role of contented black Southerners, they gave blacks everywhere renewed hope, and they helped to create a national leader who took them closer to the promised land." --Jimmie L. Franklin, The Alabama Review "In an absorbing, first-hand narrative, the dignified and unassuming Robinson focuses on the role of the Women's Political Council (WPC) and details the WPC's plans to engineer a boycott months before the heralded arrest of Rosa Parks. . . . The value of this primary source will endure long after many best-selling, secondary accounts of national politics during this period have disappeared." --Keith D. Miller and Elizabeth Vander Lei, Explorations in Sight and Sound
Call Number: F334.M79 N46 1987
ISBN: 0870495240
Publication Date: 1987-05-22
Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric FonerFrom the "preeminent historian of Reconstruction" (New York Times Book Review), the prize-winning classic work on the post-Civil War period that shaped modern America. Eric Foner's "masterful treatment of one of the most complex periods of American history" (New Republic) redefined how the post-Civil War period was viewed. Reconstruction chronicles the way in which Americans--black and white--responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. It addresses the ways in which the emancipated slaves' quest for economic autonomy and equal citizenship shaped the political agenda of Reconstruction; the remodeling of Southern society and the place of planters, merchants, and small farmers within it; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans. This "smart book of enormous strengths" (Boston Globe) remains the standard work on the wrenching post-Civil War period--an era whose legacy still reverberates in the United States today.