Promises to Keep: African Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights)

Widely considered the first history of US Constitutionalism that places African Americans at the center, Promises to Keep is a compelling overview of how conflict over African Americans' place in American society has shaped the Constitution, law, and our understanding of citizenship and rights. Both authoritative and accessible, this revised and expanded second edition incorporates key insights from the last three decades of scholarship and makes sense of recent developments in civil rights, from the War on Drugs to the rise of Black Lives Matter. Promises to Keep shows how African Americans have played a critical role in transforming the Constitution from a bulwark of slavery to a document that is truer to the nation's promise of equality. The book begins by examining debates about race from the Revolutionary Era at the Constitutional Convention and covers the establishment of civil rights protections during Reconstruction, the Jim Crow backlash, and the evolution of the civil rights movement, from the formation of the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People to legal victories and massive organized protests. Comprehensive in scope, this book moves from debates over slavery at the nation's founding to contemporary discussions of affirmative action, voting rights, mass incarceration, and police brutality. In the process, it provides readers with a historical perspective critical to understanding some of today's most important social and political issues.

History

Nieman, Donald G.

Americas

Oxford University Press

African-Americans have had an ambivalent relationship with the Constitution for more than two hundred years. Throughout most of American history, racist interpretations of the Constitution have sanctioned a legal system supportive of slavery, marked blacks as inferiors, rendered them politically powerless, and denied them justice and access to society's resources. Yet both black and white opponents of slavery and racial subordination--from antebellum abolitionists to twentieth-century civil rights leaders--have found principles in the Constitution that support their demands for freedom, citizenship, and equality. In Promises to Keep, Donald G. Nieman tells the story of this paradoxical relationship, tracing it from the birth of the Republic to current battles over school segregation, voting rights, and affirmative action. While Nieman examines the devastating effects of constitutionally sanctioned racism on the lives of African-Americans, he also shows how blacks and their white allies have been active agents of constitutional change since the early nineteenth century, forging an egalitarian constitutionalism and using it to press a reluctant nation to honor its long-deferred promise of equality. Compact, lively, and readable, Promises to Keep illuminates the past and offers a fresh perspective on the current debate over civil rights, showing how it too often ignores the tragic history of law and race in America. This is the first volume of Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights, an important series co-sponsored by the Organization of American Historians and Oxford University Press, under the general editorship of Kermit L. Hall.

Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights)

Africa

The Bureau was established in the War Department in 1865 to undertake the relief effort and the unprecedented social reconstruction that would bring freedpeople to full citizenship. It issued food and clothing, operated hospitals and temporary camps, helped locate family members, promoted education, helped freedmen legalize marriages, provided employment, supervised labor contracts, provided legal representation, investigated racial confrontations, settled freedmen on abandoned or confiscated lands, and worked with African American soldiers and sailors and their heirs to secure back pay, bounty payments, and pensions.

To set the law in motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the legal rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 (KTO studies in American history)

Legal History

KTO Press

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Freedmen's Bureau and Black Freedom (African American Life in the Post-Emancipation South, 1861-1900, No. 2)

Garland Science

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nieman, Donald G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Nieman, Donald G.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Nieman, Donald G.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Promises to Keep: African Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights)

Promises to Keep: African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present (Bicentennial Essays on the Bill of Rights)

To set the law in motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the legal rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 (KTO studies in American history)

Freedmen's Bureau and Black Freedom (African American Life in the Post-Emancipation South, 1861-1900, No. 2)