Stamped

Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (Little, Brown and Company, 2020).

The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. Racist ideas are woven into the fabric of this country, and the first step to building an antiracist America is acknowledging America's racist past and present. This book takes you on that journey, showing how racist ideas started and were spread, and how they can be discredited.

-Publisher's Description

Troublemakers: Students' Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s

Kathryn Schumaker, Troublemakers: Students' Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s (NYU Press, 2019)

In the late 1960s, protests led by students roiled high schools across the country. As school desegregation finally took place on a wide scale, students of color were particularly vocal in contesting the racial discrimination they saw in school policies and practices. And yet, these young people had no legal right to express dissent at school. It was not until 1969 that the Supreme Court would recognize the First Amendment rights of students in the landmark Tinker v. Des Moines case.

A series of students’ rights lawsuits in the desegregation era challenged everything from school curricula to disciplinary policies. But in casting students as “troublemakers” or as “culturally deficient,” school authorities and other experts persuaded the courts to set limits on rights protections that made students of color disproportionately vulnerable to suspension and expulsion.

Troublemakers traces the history of black and Chicano student protests from small-town Mississippi to metropolitan Denver and beyond, showcasing the stories of individual protesters and demonstrating how their actions contributed to the eventual recognition of the constitutional rights of all students. Offering a fresh interpretation of this pivotal era, Troublemakers shows that when black and Chicano teenagers challenged racial discrimination in American public schools, they helped remake American constitutional law and establish protections of free speech, due process, equal protection, and privacy for students.

Julius Chambers: A Life in the Legal Struggle for Civil Rights

Richard A. Rosen & Joseph Mosnier, Julius Chambers: A Life in the Legal Struggle for Civil Rights (Univ. North Carolina Press 2016).

"Born in the hamlet of Mount Gilead, North Carolina, Julius Chambers (1936–2013) escaped the fetters of the Jim Crow South to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s as the nation’s leading African American civil rights attorney. Following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Chambers worked to advance the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s strategic litigation campaign for civil rights, ultimately winning landmark school and employment desegregation cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. Undaunted by the dynamiting of his home and the arson that destroyed the offices of his small integrated law practice, Chambers pushed federal civil rights law to its highwater mark."
—Publisher's description

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America

Ari Berman, Give us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).

"Berman brings the struggle over voting rights to life through meticulous archival research, in-depth interviews with major figures in the debate, and incisive on-the-ground reporting. In vivid prose, he takes the reader from the demonstrations of the civil rights era to the halls of Congress to the chambers of the Supreme Court. At this important moment in history, Give Us the Ballot provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time.
—Publisher's Description
 

The Economics of Race in the United States

Brendan O'Flaherty (Columbia University), The Economics of Race in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2015).


"Brendan O’Flaherty brings the tools of economic analysis—incentives, equilibrium, optimization, and more—to bear on contentious issues of race in the United States. In areas ranging from quality of health care and education, to employment opportunities and housing, to levels of wealth and crime, he shows how racial differences among blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remain a powerful determinant in the lives of twenty-first-century Americans. More capacious than standard texts, The Economics of Race in the United States discusses important aspects of history and culture and explores race as a social and biological construct to make a compelling argument for why race must play a major role in economic and public policy. People are not color-blind, and so policies cannot be color-blind either." 
—Publisher's description

Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier (CUNY School of Law). Imprisoned by the Past (Oxford University Press, 2015).


"McCleskey's criminal law case resulted in one of the most important Supreme Court cases in U.S. legal history, where the Court confronted evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of capital punishment. The case marks the last that the Supreme Court realistically might have held that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As such, the constitutional law case also created a turning point in the death penalty debate in the country. The book connects McCleskey's case—as well as his life and crime—to the issues that have haunted the American death penalty debate since the first executions by early settlers and that still affect the legal system today."
—Publisher's description

Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation

Estelle B. Freedman (Standford University). Redefining Rape (Harvard University Press, 2013).

"Rape has never had a universally accepted definition, and the uproar over 'legitimate rape' during the 2012 U.S. elections confirms that it remains a word in flux. . . . In this ambitious new history, Estelle Freedman demonstrates that our definition of rape has depended heavily on dynamics of political power and social privilege. . . . Between the 1870s and the 1930s, at the height of racial segregation and lynching, and amid the campaign for woman suffrage, women’s rights supporters and African American activists tried to expand understandings of rape in order to gain legal protection from coercive sexual relations, assaults by white men on black women, street harassment, and the sexual abuse of children. By redefining rape, they sought to redraw the very boundaries of citizenship."
—Publisher's Website

The Crusade for Equality in the Workplace: The Griggs v. Duke Power Story

Robert Belton (Vanderbilt University). The Crusade for Equality in the Workplace (University Press of Kansas, 2014).

"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminated much blatant discrimination, but after its enactment before Griggs, businesses held the view that a commitment to equality required only eliminating policies and practices that were intentionally discriminatory—the 'disparate treatment' test. . . . In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Supreme Court ruled that a 'disparate impact' test could also apply—that the 1964 Civil Rights Act extended to practices with a discriminatory effect. In tracing the impact of the Griggs ruling on employment practices, this book documents the birth, maturation, death and rebirth of disparate impact theory, including its erosion by later Supreme Court decisions and its restoration by congressional action in the Civil Rights Act of 1991."
—The Crusade for Equality in the Workplace book jacket

For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law

Randall Kennedy (Harvard Law School). For Discrimination (Pantheon Books, 2013).

"This is arguably the most clearheaded defense of affirmative action ever written. Kennedy's incisive analysis includes a compelling critique of a range of arguments by legal experts and social scientists on the pros and cons of affirmative action. In clear prose For Discrimination advances powerful arguments for sensibly defined affirmative action. This thoughtful book is a must-read for all Americans devoted to addressing past and current injustice."
—Prof. William Julius Wilson, Harvard University