Discusses the changes faced by African Americans after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, describing how families tried to reunite, find homes, and jobs.

Collection of over 350 German immigrant letters composed by one individual or family group.

This book of essays by a noted historian of race relations is “a worthy contribution to the literature on the long struggle for racial justice” (Journal of African American History). The ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice lies at the heart of America’s evolving identity. The pursuit of equal rights is often met with social and political trepidation, forcing citizens and leaders to grapple with controversial issues of race, class, and gender. Renowned scholar Harvard Sitkoff has devoted his life to the study of the civil rights movement, becoming a key figure in global human rights discussions and an authority on American liberalism. Toward Freedom Land assembles Sitkoff ‘s writings on twentieth-century race relations, representing some of the finest race-related historical research on record. Spanning thirty-five years of Sitkoff ‘s distingushed career, the collection features an in-depth examination of the Great Depression and its effects on African Americans, the intriguing story of the labor movement and its relationship to African American workers, and a discussion of the effects of World War II on the civil rights movement. His precise analysis illuminates multifaceted racial issues including the New Deal’s impact on race relations, the Detroit Riot of 1943, and connections between African Americans, Jews, and the Holocaust. “Over the past five decades, Harvard Sitkoff has established himself as one of the foremost voices on the black freedom struggle in the United States.” —Florida Historical Quarterly “Provides useful insight into an influential historian’s thinking on an important subject.” —Journal of Southern History “Each essay is a delight to read, with the lucid prose, careful research, and insightful analysis that make Sitkoff the excellent historian he is.” —The Historian

The Zapatistas of Chiapas and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) of Brazil are often celebrated as shining examples in the global struggle against neoliberalism. But what have these movements achieved for their members in more than two decades of resistance and can any of these achievements realistically contribute to the rise of a viable alternative? Through a perfect balance of grassroots testimonies, participative observation and consideration of key debates in development studies, agrarian political economy, historical sociology and critical political economy, Land and Freedom compares, for the first time, the Zapatista and MST movements. Casting a spotlight on their resistance to globalizing market forces, Vergara-Camus gets to the heart of how these movements organize themselves and how territorial control, politicization and empowerment of their membership and the decommodification of social relations are key to understanding their radical development potential.

Each book in this Land of Our Lady series contains a concise yet interesting record of a specific period in American history--always explaining the Catholic influence of religion, culture and morality. Every private Catholic school, home-schooling family, and library will benefit from these Catholic textbooks. Book 1: Founders of Freedom, most often used in Grade 4, begins with the Creation, ending with events leading up to the discovery of the New World.

Sweet Land of Liberty is Thomas J. Sugrue’s epic account of the abiding quest for racial equality in states from Illinois to New York, and of how the intense northern struggle differed from and was inspired by the fight down South. Sugrue’s panoramic view sweeps from the 1920s to the present–more than eighty of the most decisive years in American history. He uncovers the forgotten stories of battles to open up lunch counters, beaches, and movie theaters in the North; the untold history of struggles against Jim Crow schools in northern towns; the dramatic story of racial conflict in northern cities and suburbs; and the long and tangled histories of integration and black power. Filled with unforgettable characters and riveting incidents, and making use of information and accounts both public and private, such as the writings of obscure African American journalists and the records of civil rights and black power groups, Sweet Land of Liberty creates an indelible history.

"A superb book about a topic that should be front and center in the American political debate" (National Review), from the acclaimed Harvard scholar and historian of the Russian Revolution An exploration of a wide range of national and political systems to demonstrate persuasively that private ownership has served over the centuries to limit the power of the state and enable democratic institutions to evolve and thrive in the Western world. Beginning with Greece and Rome, where the concept of private property as we understand it first developed, Richard Pipes then shows us how, in the late medieval period, the idea matured with the expansion of commerce and the rise of cities. He contrasts England, a country where property rights and parliamentary government advanced hand-in-hand, with Russia, where restrictions on ownership have for centuries consistently abetted authoritarian regimes; finally he provides reflections on current and future trends in the United States. Property and Freedom is a brilliant contribution to political thought and an essential work on a subject of vital importance.

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"—the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

Conflicts caused by competing concepts of property are the subject of this book that reshapes study of the relationship between law and society in Australasia and North America. Chapters analyse decisions made by governments and courts upon questions of policy and law in terms of their consequences for rights and models of personhood. Late twentieth-century decisions concerning native title in Canada and Australia demonstrate the relevance of historical case studies of communal and fee-simple land holding in colonial and post-colonial societies. An international team of contributors draw on their experience from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions.