Black Liberation from Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter

Embracing an argument-based model for teaching history, the Debating American History series encourages students to participate in a contested, evidence-based discourse about the human past. Each book poses a question that historians debate--How democratic is the U.S. Constitution? or Why did civil war erupt in the United States in 1861?--and provides abundant primary sources so that students can make their own efforts at interpreting the evidence. They can then use that analysis to construct answers to the big question that frames the debate and argue in support of their position.

Black Liberation from Reconstruction to Black Lives Matter poses this big question: After decades of struggle, was there a breakthrough in civil rights in the 1960s?

List of Images and Figures
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Series Introduction

The Big Question

Timeline

Historians' Conversations
Position #1-The 1960s Breakthrough in Civil Rights
Position #2-The Permanence of Racism: No Breakthrough in Racial Equality

Debating the Question
Reconstruction and the Meaning of Freedom
1.1 Reconstruction Era Amendments
1.2 Black Codes of Mississippi, 1865
1.3 Organization and Principles of the Ku Klux Klan, 1868
1.4 The Civil Rights Act of 1875

Jim Crow and the Problem of Racism
2.1 The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883)
2.2 Sharecropper Images and Contract
2.3 Negro Rule Cartoon, 1890s
2.4 A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1895
2.5 Scottsboro Boys, 1931
2.6 Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, 1932-1972
2.7 Restrictive Covenants from Milwaukee, Wisconsin
2.8 Alabama Voter Registration Application, c. 1965
2.9 Urban Renewal, c. 1960

Voices of Protest
3.1 Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (1896)
3.2 Great Migration Articles, Chicago Defender, May 17, 1919
3.3 Marcus Garvey, "Aims and Objects of the Movement for Solution of Negro Problem," 1924
3.4 Madame C. J. Walker, 1910s-1960s
3.5 The New Negro (1925)
3.6 "Strange Fruit" (1939)
3.7 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Address to Montgomery Improvement Association," Holt St. Baptist Church, 1956
3.8 Congress of Racial Equality, c. 1962
3.9 James Baldwin, "My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation, 1963"
3.10 March on Washington Correspondence and Program, 1963
3.11 Malcolm X, "Ballot or the Bullet," King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan, April 12, 1964
3.12 Ella Baker, "Address at the Hattiesburg Freedom Day Rally," 1964
3.13 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Platform, 1966
3.14 Representative Shirley Chisolm, "Speech at Howard University," 1969 (excerpts)
3.15 Angel Davis,"Speech Delivered at the Embassy Auditorium," 1972
3.16 Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, "The Message," 1982

Modern Civil Rights Laws and Policies
4.1 Executive Order 8802, 1941
4.2 Sweatt v. Painter et al. 339 U.S. 629 (1950)
4.3 Executive Order 10925-Establishing the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, 1961 (excerpts)
4.4 Civil Rights Act of 1964 (excerpts)
4.5 Voting Rights Act of 1965 (excerpts) and Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution
4.6 Black Occupational Shares, 1960s-2000s
4.7 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

The Movement(s) Continues
5.1 Rodney King (1991)
5.2 Murder of Trayvon Martin (Images and Commentary)
5.3 The Movement for Black Lives, 2013
5.4 Mass Incarceration and Felon Disfranchisement
5.5 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Stop-and-Frisk Cases (New York City and Milwaukee)
5.6 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
Fact Sheet on Incarceration, 2019
5.7 Experts of Color Network Letter on the Flint Water Crisis (2016)
5.8 Protests in Response to Police Killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd (2020)

Additional Resources

Index