front cover of Brotherhoods of Color
Brotherhoods of Color
Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality
Eric Arnesen
Harvard University Press, 2001

From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution—the story of African Americans on the railroad.

African Americans have been a part of the railroad from its inception, but today they are largely remembered as Pullman porters and track layers. The real history is far richer, a tale of endless struggle, perseverance, and partial victory. In a sweeping narrative, Arnesen re-creates the heroic efforts by black locomotive firemen, brakemen, porters, dining car waiters, and redcaps to fight a pervasive system of racism and job discrimination fostered by their employers, white co-workers, and the unions that legally represented them even while barring them from membership.

Decades before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, black railroaders forged their own brand of civil rights activism, organizing their own associations, challenging white trade unions, and pursuing legal redress through state and federal courts. In recapturing black railroaders' voices, aspirations, and challenges, Arnesen helps to recast the history of black protest and American labor in the twentieth century.

[more]

front cover of The Mexican American Experience in Texas
The Mexican American Experience in Texas
Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality
By Martha Menchaca
University of Texas Press, 2022

A historical overview of Mexican Americans' social and economic experiences in Texas

For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, this book illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience.

Martha Menchaca begins with the Spanish settlement of Texas, exploring how Mexican Americans’ racial heritage limited their incorporation into society after the territory’s annexation. She then illustrates their political struggles in the nineteenth century as they tried to assert their legal rights of citizenship and retain possession of their land, and goes on to explore their fight, in the twentieth century, against educational segregation, jury exclusion, and housing covenants. It was only in 1967, she shows, that the collective pressure placed on the state government by Mexican American and African American activists led to the beginning of desegregation. Menchaca concludes with a look at the crucial roles that Mexican Americans have played in national politics, education, philanthropy, and culture, while acknowledging the important work remaining to be done in the struggle for equality.

[more]

front cover of Race in America
Race in America
The Struggle for Equality
Herbert Hill
University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

Race in America is a multidisciplinary analysis of race and injustice by some of the nation’s foremost scholar-activists who helped shape the course of the struggle for civil rights during the recent past.  These essays provide a historical retrospective, an assessment of where we are now, and an outline of possibilities for the future.
    The major controversial issues in race relations, in the past and in the present, such as affirmative action, educational segregation, racial practices of labor unions, legal strategies for protest movements, the persistence of racism in American institutions, and the sources of resistance to change are discussed at length by major authorities in their respective fields.
    Many of the most important events in recent American history come alive in these pages as the strategies and programs, the victories and defeats of the civil rights movement are rigorously examined.  A unique aspect of the book is that the human experience of active participants in this rich history is evoked through personal and often poignant accounts, such as those of Kenneth B. Clark, who in a memorable autobiographical essay describes a long life devoted to the pursuit of racial justice, and Patricia J. Williams, who relates the contemporary struggles of African American women to the historical context of slavery and its aftermath.
    As no other book can, this collection provides the basis for the critical insights and historical perspectives that are essential for an understanding of the central issue still confronting American society:  race and racism.

[more]

front cover of Women and the Press
Women and the Press
The Struggle for Equality
Patricia Bradley
Northwestern University Press, 2005
When Abigail Adams made her famous plea to John Adams to "remember the ladies," the role of advocacy on behalf of U.S. gender equality began its rocky and still uncompleted journey. In Women and the Press, Patricia Bradley examines the tensions that have arisen over the course of this journey as they relate to women in journalism. From their first entrance into the commercial press as sentimental writers, to the present day, the call for gender equality has had special meaning for female journalists. Is there a role, a responsibility, for advocacy, even subversion, in a newsroom setting? This is an account of how women in journalism sought to integrate the need for gender equality with the realities of the journalistic workplace.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter