Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has confronted civil rights issues during his tenure in the White House, and most have faced intense demands to speak publicly about the nation's racial problems and possible solutions. Indeed, modern American presidents have become a major focal point for the civil rights struggle. In The Modern Presidency and Civil Rights, Garth E. Pauley examines modern presidents' communicative and symbolic involvement in these matters, focusing on four crucial speeches, the circumstances surrounding them, and their effect on public attitudes and policy. Pauley's perspective is both historical and critical. It explores the pattern of presidential discourse on race in the modern era and considers the promise and limitations of presidential talk with regard to civil rights. The four significant episodes of American presidential speech Pauley examines are: Harry Truman's address of June 29, 1947, to the NAACP; Dwight Eisenhower's national address on September 24, 1957, following the integration crisis at Little Rock; John F. Kennedy's speech on June 11, 1963, labeling civil rights as primarily a moral issue; and Lyndon Johnson's voting rights message of March 15, 1965. Historical background is provided by a discussion of Roosevelt's racial stance. Pauley's analysis is guided by several assumptions about the presidency, civil rights, and rhetoric, beginning with the assumption that presidential rhetoric matters. Pauley examines the role of rhetoric in leadership, policy making, and the political meanings and interpretations that form the political culture. Following in the tradition of his discipline, Pauley gives both close analysis of the speech text itself and consideration of the historical situation surrounding the speech.

Explores the relationship between race and the rise of conservativism in America and the political setbacks that remained in the way of attempts to remedy oppression and discrimination.

Few relationships have proved more pivotal in changing the course of American politics than those between presidents and social movements. For all their differences, both presidents and social movements are driven by a desire to recast the political system, often pursuing rival agendas that set them on a collision course. Even when their interests converge, these two actors often compete to control the timing and conditions of political change. During rare historical moments, however, presidents and social movements forged partnerships that profoundly recast American politics. Rivalry and Reform explores the relationship between presidents and social movements throughout history and into the present day, revealing the patterns that emerge from the epic battles and uneasy partnerships that have profoundly shaped reform. Through a series of case studies, including Abraham Lincoln and abolitionism, Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights movement, and Ronald Reagan and the religious right, Sidney M. Milkis and Daniel J. Tichenor argue persuasively that major political change usually reflects neither a top-down nor bottom-up strategy but a crucial interplay between the two. Savvy leaders, the authors show, use social movements to support their policy goals. At the same time, the most successful social movements target the president as either a source of powerful support or the center of opposition. The book concludes with a consideration of Barack Obama’s approach to contemporary social movements such as Black Lives Matter, United We Dream, and Marriage Equality.

This book extends what we know about the development of civil rights and the role of the NAACP in American politics. Through a sweeping archival analysis of the NAACP's battle against lynching and mob violence from 1909 to 1923, this book examines how the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, secured the support of Congress, and won a landmark criminal procedure case in front of the Supreme Court.

A top Washington journalist recounts the dramatic political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that created modern America, on the fiftieth anniversary of its passage It was a turbulent time in America—a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door—when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Capitol Hill in the past. But this one was different because, as one influential senator put it, it was "an idea whose time has come." In a powerful narrative layered with revealing detail, Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support. He evokes the high purpose and low dealings that marked the creation of this monumental law, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of new interviews that bring to life this signal achievement in American history. Often hailed as the most important law of the past century, the Civil Rights Act stands as a lesson for our own troubled times about what is possible when patience, bipartisanship, and decency rule the day.

Now abridged for courses, this edition of Hugh D. Graham's groundbreaking history of national policy during the battle for civil rights recreates the intense debates in Congress and the White House that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 banning discrimination against minorities and women. Following the implementation of these policies through a thickening maze of federal agencies and court decisions, the text reveals how the classic liberal agenda of non-discrimination evolved into the controversial program of affirmative action, surprisingly enough, under Richard Nixon. Based on extensive, groundbreaking research in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidential archives and special collections of the Library of Congress, Civil Rights and the Presidency will be invaluable for courses in American history, political science, and black and women's studies.

This book examines the contact relationships between U.S. presidents and America's intellectuals since 1960.

This book details, in a series of first-person accounts, how Hubert Humphrey and other dedicated civil rights supporters fashioned the famous cloture vote that turned back the determined southern filibuster in the U. S. Senate and got the monumental Civil Rights Act bill passed into law. Authors include Humphrey, who was the Democratic whip in the Senate at the time; Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., a top Washington civil rights lobbyist; and John G. Stewart, Humphrey's top legislative aide. These accounts are essential for understanding the full meaning and effect of America's civil rights movement.

Though Jimmy Carter is widely viewed as one of the least effective modern presidents, the human rights agenda for which his administration is known remains high in the national awareness and continues to provide important justifications for presidential and congressional action a quarter-century later. The very elements of Carter's communications on human rights that engendered obstacles to the formation of a coherent and consistent policy--the term's vagueness, the difficulties of applying it, its uneasy relationship with national security interests, and the divergence between Democratic and Republican understandings--allowed "human rights" to become a useful rubric for presidents, both Democratic and Republican, who followed Carter. Stuckey discusses the key elements of how human rights came to the nation's attention.

Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the 2022 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, Northern and Southern, in the decades before the Civil War. The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states’ insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement’s ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.