History Commons^™

America's Forgotten Constitutions: Defiant Visions Of Power And Community, Robert Tsai

Robert L Tsai

The U.S. Constitution opens by proclaiming the sovereignty of all citizens: "We the People." Robert Tsai's gripping history of alternative constitutions invites readers into the circle of those who have rejected this ringing assertion--the defiant groups that refused to accept the Constitution's definition of who "the people" are and how their authority should be exercised. America's Forgotten Constitutions is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Tsai chronicles eight episodes in which discontented citizens took the extraordinary step of drafting a new constitution. He examines …

Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …

In The Jungle Of Cities [Review Of The Book Harold Washington And The Neighborhoods: Progressive City Reform In Chicago, 1983-1987], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] At first glance such a spatial transformation of work may seem positive, as indeed it was for the largely white work force that left the city and staffed these new positions. But left behind geographically, economically, and socially were the largely black (and to a lesser extent, Mexican) working-class residents. It was at this juncture, with jobs disappearing and the urban social structure fragmented, that black Chicago, symbolized in the person of Harold Washington, finally assumed political power. In Harold Washington and the Neighborhoods, editors Pierre Clavel and Wim Wiewel have collected a group of essays that examine the …

Yick Wo Re-Revisited: Nonblack Nonwhites And Fourteenth Amendment History, Thomas W. Joo

Thomas W Joo

The 1886 Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins is often viewed as a precursor of the racial civil rights era represented by Brown v. Board of Education. In fact, the case was primarily about economic rights. In a new article, Unexplainable on Grounds of Race: Doubts About Yick Wo, forthcoming in the Illinois Law Review, Professor Gabriel Chin argues that Yick Wo "is not a race case at all." I argue that it is a "race case" because the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment to vindicate economic rights necessarily entangled economic rights with race--in an ultimately pernicious way. …

Are Asians Black?: The Asian-American Civil Rights Agenda And The Contemporary Significance Of The Black/White Paradigm, Janine Young Kim

Janine Kim