African American Studies Commons^™

Foreword: Abolition Constitutionalism, Dorothy E. Roberts

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In this Foreword, I make the case for an abolition constitutionalism that attends to the theorizing of prison abolitionists. In Part I, I provide a summary of prison abolition theory and highlight its foundational tenets that engage with the institution of slavery and its eradication. I discuss how abolition theorists view the current prison industrial complex as originating in, though distinct from, racialized chattel slavery and the racial capitalist regime that relied on and sustained it, and their movement as completing the “unfinished liberation” sought by slavery abolitionists in the past. Part II considers whether the U.S. Constitution is an …

The Loving Story: Using A Documentary To Reconsider The Status Of An Iconic Interracial Married Couple, Regina Austin

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The Loving Story (Augusta Films 2011), directed by Nancy Buirski, tells the backstory of the groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned state laws barring interracial marriage. The article looks to the documentary to explain why the Lovings should be considered icons of racial and ethnic civil rights, however much they might be associated with marriage equality today. The film shows the Lovings to be ordinary people who took their nearly decade long struggle against white supremacy to the nation’s highest court out of a genuine commitment to each other and a determination to live in …

Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee

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Today, most American workers do not have constitutional rights on the job. As The Workplace Constitution shows, this outcome was far from inevitable. Instead, American workers have a long history of fighting for such rights. Beginning in the 1930s, civil rights advocates sought constitutional protections against racial discrimination by employers and unions. At the same time, a conservative right-to-work movement argued that the Constitution protected workers from having to join or support unions. Those two movements, with their shared aim of extending constitutional protections to American workers, were a potentially powerful combination. But they sought to use those protections to …

Book Review (Paul Frymer's Black And Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, And The Decline Of The Democratic Party)., Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Book Review (Judith Kilpatrick's There When We Needed Him: Wiley Austin Branton, Civil Rights Warrior), Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Book Review (Risa L. Goluboff's The Lost Promise Of Civil Rights), Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

Hotspots In A Cold War: The Naacp's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948-1964, Sophia Z. Lee

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No abstract provided.

A National Issue: Segregation In The District Of Columbia And The Civil Rights Movement At Mid-Century, Wendell E. Pritchett

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No abstract provided.

Interview With Michele Tuck-Ponder, Diankha Warren, Michele Tuck-Ponder, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Michele Tuck-Ponder (L '83) has held many positions in law, government, education, media relaions, and the non-profit sector. From 1995 to 1997 she served as mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.

Interview With Regina Austin, Randy Lee, Regina Austin, Legal Oral History Project, University Of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Legal Oral History Project

For transcript, click the Download button above. For video index, click the link below.

Regina Austin (L '73), William A. Schnader Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, pursues her interest in the overlapping burdens of race, gender, and class oppression in traditional legal scholarship, as well as in her work on documentary films. She is the director of the Penn Program on Documentaries & the Law, which holds an annual Visual Legal Advocacy Roundtable for public interest lawyers, hosts screenings of law-genre documentary films throughout the year, and maintains a national repository of dozens of clemency videos as …

The Priority Paradigm: Private Choices And The Limits Of Equality, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.

Racism And Patriarchy In The Meaning Of Motherhood, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.

Surrogacy, Slavery, And The Ownership Of Life, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

Discrimination, Jobs, And Politics, Anita L. Allen

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No abstract provided.

De Facto School Segregation: A Constitutional And Empirical Analysis, Frank I. Goodman

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No abstract provided.