The oral history of 16 blacks and 12 whites who fought for racial change and civil rights.

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama faced a difficult task—rallying African American voters while resisting his opponents’ attempts to frame him as “too black” to govern the nation as a whole. Obama’s solution was to employ what Toni Morrison calls “race-specific, race-free language,” avoiding open discussions of racial issues while using terms and references that carried a specific cultural resonance for African American voters. Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a “post-racial” era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.

With enormous numbers of new immigrants, America is becoming dramatically more diverse racially, culturally, and ethnically. As a result, the United States faces questions that have profound consequences for its future. What does it mean to be an American? Is a new American identity developing? At the same time, the coherence of national culture has been challenged by the expansion of—and attacks on—individual and group rights, and by political leaders who prefer to finesse rather than engage cultural controversies. Many of the ideals on which the country was founded are under intense, often angry, debate, and the historic tension between individuality and community has never been felt so keenly. In One America?, distinguished contributors discuss the role of national leadership, especially the presidency, at a time when a fragmented and dysfunctional national identity has become a real possibility. Holding political views that encompass the thoughtful left and right of center, they address fundamental issues such as affirmative action, presidential engagement in questions of race, dual citizenship, interracial relationships, and English as the basic language. This book is the first examination of the role of national political leaders in maintaining or dissipating America’s national identity. It will be vital reading for political scientists, historians, policymakers, students, and anyone concerned with the future of American politics and society.

The compelling real-life story of the criminal investigation, indictment, and trial of Edgar Ray Killen, the preacher and former Ku Klux Klansman finally convicted in June 2005 for the deaths of three civil rights workers--forty-one years after their brutal murders. A stunning final chapter to the case immortalized in the movie Mississippi Burning.

Few whites who violently resisted the civil rights struggle were charged with crimes in the 1950s and 1960s. But the tide of a long-deferred justice began to change in 1994, when a Mississippi jury convicted Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. Since then, more than one hundred murder cases have been reopened, resulting in more than a dozen trials. But how much did these public trials contribute to a public reckoning with America’s racist past? Racial Reckoning investigates that question, along with the political pressures and cultural forces that compelled the legal system to revisit these decades-old crimes. “[A] timely and significant work...Romano brilliantly demystifies the false binary of villainous white men like Beckwith or Edgar Ray Killen who represent vestiges of a violent racial past with a more enlightened color-blind society...Considering the current partisan and racial divide over the prosecution of police shootings of unarmed black men, this book is a must-read for historians, legal analysts, and journalists interested in understanding the larger meanings of civil rights or racially explosive trials in America.” —Chanelle Rose, American Historical Review

Contemporary public speaking remains an important part of our national life and a substantial force in shaping current events. Many of America's most important moments and issues, such as wars, scandals, election campaigns, September 11, 2001, have been defined by oratory. Here, over 50 essays cover a substantial and interesting group of major American social, political, economic, and cultural figures from the 1960s to the present. Each entry explains the biographical forces that shaped a speaker and his or her rhetorical approach, focuses mainly on a discussion of the orator's major speeches within the context of historical events, and concludes with an appraisal of the speaker and his or her contribution to American political and social life. All entries incorporate chronologies of major speeches, bibliographies including primary sources, biographies, and critical studies and archival collections or Web sites appropriate for student research. Entries include high profile individuals such as: John D. Ashcroft, Elizabeth Dole, Jerry Falwell, Anita Hill, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Janet Reno, Gloria Steinem, Malcolm X; and many others. Excerpts of major speeches and sidebars complement the text. Ideal for researchers and students in public speaking classes, American history classes, American politics classes, contemporary public address classes, and rhetorical theory/criticism classes.

This chart book is designed to document current differences in well-being by race and Hispanic origin and to describe how such differences have evolved over the past several decades. The charts included in this book show key indicators of well-being in seven broad categories: (1) population; (2) education; (3) labor markets; (4) economic status; (5) health; (6) crime and criminal justice; and (7) housing and neighborhoods. Each section begins with a brief introduction and overview of the charts presented. This information provides a benchmark for measuring future progress and can highlight priority areas for reducing disparities across racial and ethnic groups. All the racial and ethnic groups considered here have experienced substantial improvements in well-being over the second half of the century, but disparities between groups have persisted, or in some cases, widened. An example is the decline in the relative economic status of Hispanics over the past 25 years, reflecting the increasing proportion of Hispanics with lower average levels of education, in large part because of immigration. The section on education, which makes disparities in educational attainment and achievement clear, contains information on family participation in literacy activities and preschool education. One chart reviews computer use by elementary school children, and two charts cover reading and mathematics proficiency scores, both of which have implications for the pursuit of higher education. Three charts focus on the educational attainment of adults over 25 years old. An appendix provides a list of other government publications and Internet addresses for more information. (Contains 49 graphs and bar charts.) (SLD)