Century of Struggle tells the story of one of the great social movements in American history. The struggle for women’s voting rights was one of the longest, most successful, and in some respects most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics. “The book you are about to read tells the story of one of the great social movements in American history. The struggle for women’s voting rights was one of the longest, most successful, and in some respects most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics... It is difficult to imagine now a time when women were largely removed by custom, practice, and law from the formal political rights and responsibilities that supported and sustained the nation’s young democracy... For sheer drama the suffrage movement has few equals in modern American political history.”—From the Preface by Ellen Fitzpatrick

When women picketed the White House demanding the vote on January 10, 1917, they broke new ground in political activism. Demanding that President Wilson influence Congress, they marched in the streets in the nation's first ever coast-to-coast campaign for political rights. Women were imprisoned for peaceful protests, went on hunger strikes and were beaten and tortured by authorities. But they won the 19th Amendment, ensuring that the right to vote could not be denied because of gender. Their successful nonviolent civil rights campaign established a precedent for those that followed, giving them the tools--including the vote--needed to advance their goals. This book chronicles the work of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party and their influence on American political activism.

Much has been written about Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers' heyday in the 1960s and '70s, but the story of their profound, ongoing influence on 21st century social justice movements has until now been left untold. This book unearths this legacy.

Lawrence Vale explores the rise, fall, and redevelopment of three public housing projects in Boston. Vale looks at these projects from the perspectives of their low-income residents and assesses the contributions of the design professionals who helped to transform these once devastated places during the 1980s and 1990s.

This new edition of Patterson's widely used book carries the story of battles over poverty and social welfare through what the author calls the "amazing 1990s," those years of extraordinary performance of the economy. He explores a range of issues arising from the economic phenomenon--increasing inequality and demands for use of an improved poverty definition. He focuses the story on the impact of the highly controversial welfare reform of 1996, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President Clinton, despite the laments of anguished liberals.

The riveting story of the fight for same-sex marriage in the United States--the most important civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium. On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal throughout the United States. But the road to victory was much longer than many know. In this seminal work, Sasha Issenberg takes us back to Hawaii in the 1990s, when that state's supreme court first started grappling with the issue, and traces the fight for marriage equality from the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to the Goodridge decision that made Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and finally to the seminal Supreme Court decisions of Windsor and Obergefell. This meticulously reported work sheds new light on every aspect of this fraught history and brings to life the perspectives of those who fought courageously for the right to marry as well as those who fervently believed that same-sex marriage would destroy the nation. It is sure to become the definitive book on one of the most important civil rights fights of our time.

... Racial shifter ... are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the U.S. census. Many racial shifters are people who, while looking for their roots, have recently discovered their Native American ancestry ...

From the glory days of the railroad to today's gridlocked, six-lane highway, Getting There dramatizes America's shift from rail to road transportation, how it has robbed Americans of the choice of travel options enjoyed by Europeans, and why it threatens the nation's economic future. Stephen B. Goddard reveals how government joined automakers and roadbuilders to nearly destroy the rails, and why the 21st century will witness high-tech remedies and a railroad resurgence.

Like most of the nation during the 1930s, St. Louis, Missouri, was caught in the stifling grip of the Great Depression. For the next thirty years, the "Gateway City" continued to experience significant urban decline as its population swelled and the area's industries stagnated. Over these decades, many African American citizens in the region found themselves struggling financially and fighting for access to profitable jobs and suitable working conditions. To combat ingrained racism, crippling levels of poverty, and sub-standard living conditions, black women worked together to form a community-based culture of resistance—fighting for employment, a living wage, dignity, representation, and political leadership. Gateway to Equality investigates black working-class women's struggle for economic justice from the rise of New Deal liberalism in the 1930s to the social upheavals of the 1960s. Author Keona K. Ervin explains that the conditions in twentieth-century St. Louis were uniquely conducive to the rise of this movement since the city's economy was based on light industries that employed women, such as textiles and food processing. As part of the Great Migration, black women migrated to the city at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and labor and black freedom movements relied less on a charismatic, male leadership model. This made it possible for women to emerge as visible and influential leaders in both formal and informal capacities. In this impressive study, Ervin presents a stunning account of the ways in which black working-class women creatively fused racial and economic justice. By illustrating that their politics played an important role in defining urban political agendas, her work sheds light on an unexplored aspect of community activism and illuminates the complexities of the overlapping civil rights and labor movements during the first half of the twentieth century.