Books in the The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures series

Ira Berlin offers a framework for understanding slavery's demise in the United States. Emancipation was not an occasion but a century-long process of brutal struggle by generations of African Americans who were not naive about the price of freedom. Just as slavery was initiated and maintained by violence, undoing slavery also required violence.

Anthony Badger explains why liberal campaigns for race-neutral economic policies failed to win over white Southerners. When federal programs did not deliver the economic benefits that white Southerners expected, the appeal of biracial politics was supplanted by the values-based lure of conservative Republicans.

As the U.S. gained independence, a full fifth of the country's population was African American. In this compact volume, Nash reorients our understanding of early America, and reveals the perilous choices of the founding fathers that shaped the nation's future. Here is a powerful story of the nation's multiple, and painful, paths to freedom.

In ruling after ruling, the three most important pre-Civil War justices-Marshall, Taney, and Story-upheld slavery. Paul Finkelman establishes an authoritative account of each justice's proslavery position, the reasoning behind his opposition to black freedom, and the personal incentives that embedded racism ever deeper in American civic life.

Two-thirds of Africans, both free and enslaved, who came to the Americas from 1500 to 1870 came to Spanish America and Brazil. Yet Afro-Latin Americans have been excluded from narratives of their hemisphere's history. George Reid Andrews redresses this omission by making visible the lives and labors of black Latin Americans in the New World.

Abraham Lincoln projects a larger-than-life image across American history owing to his role as the Great Emancipator. Yet this noble aspect of Lincoln's identity is the dimension that some historians have cast into doubt. The award-winning historian and Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo offers a vigorous defense of America's sixteenth president.

In this exploration of the 20th-century civil rights and black power eras, Martin uses cultural politics as a lens through which to understand the African-American freedom struggle. In freedom songs, in the exuberance of an Aretha Franklin concert, in Faith Ringgold's exploration of race and sexuality, the personal and social became the political.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Hahn challenges deep-rooted views in the writing of American and African-American history. Moving from 18th-century slave emancipations through slave activity during the Civil War and on to the black power movements of the 20th century, he asks us to rethink African-American history and politics in bolder, more dynamic terms.

"Wilentz brings a lifetime of learning and a mastery of political history to this brilliant book."--David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceA Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. In this essential reconsideration of the creation and legacy of our nation's founding document, Sean Wilentz reveals the tortured compromises that led the Founders to abide slavery without legitimizing it, a deliberate ambiguity that fractured the nation seventy years later. Contesting the Southern proslavery version of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass pointed to the framers' refusal to validate what they called "property in man." No Property in Man has opened a fresh debate about the political and legal struggles over slavery that began during the Revolution and concluded with the Civil War. It drives straight to the heart of the single most contentious issue in all of American history. "Revealing and passionately argued... [Wilentz] insists that because the framers did not sanction slavery as a matter of principle, the antislavery legacy of the Constitution has been...'misconstrued' for over 200 years."--Khalil Gibran Muhammad, New York Times "Wilentz's careful and insightful analysis helps us understand how Americans who hated slavery, such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, could come to see the Constitution as an ally in their struggle."--Eric Foner

This collective biography of four jazz musicians from Brooklyn, Ghana, and South Africa demonstrates how modern Africa reshaped jazz, how modern jazz helped form a new African identity, and how musical convergences and crossings altered the politics and culture of both continents.

Like the canaries that alerted miners to a poisonous atmosphere, issues of race point to underlying problems in society that ultimately affect everyone, not just minorities. Now, in a powerful and challenging book, Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres propose a radical new way to confront race in the twenty-first century.

"The problem of the [20th] century is the problem of the color-line," W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1903. His words have proven sadly prophetic. As we enter the 21st century, the problem remains. This book speaks powerfully to the question of how the circumstances of race and racism have changed in our time-and how these changes will affect our future.

Challenging the boundaries of slavery ultimately brought on the Civil War and the unexpected, immediate emancipation of slaves long before it could have been achieved in any other way. This imaginative and fascinating book puts slavery into a new light and underscores anew the desperate human tragedy lying at the very heart of the American story.

Tudor explains how many African peoples came to think of themselves as descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel. Pursuing medieval and modern race narratives over a millennium in which Jews were cast as black and black Africans were cast as Jews, he reveals a complex interaction between religious and racial labels and their political uses.

Alba argues that the social cleavages separating Americans into distinct, unequal ethno-racial groups could narrow dramatically in the coming decades. In Blurring the Color Line, Alba explores a future in which socially mobile minorities could blur stark boundaries and gain much more control over the social expression of racial differences.

The Emancipation Proclamation is responsible both for Lincoln's being hailed as the Great Emancipator and for his being pilloried by those who consider his once-radical effort at emancipation insufficient. Holzer examines the impact of Lincoln's announcement at the moment of its creation, and then as its meaning has changed over time.

The admired American painter Winslow Homer rose to national attention during the Civil War. But one of his most important early images remained unknown for a century. "Near Andersonville" (1865-66) is the earliest and least known of these impressive images. This title reveals the long-hidden story of this remarkable Civil War painting.

Examines the complex interplay among regional, national, and international politics that plagued the efforts of Mexican Americans and African Americans to find common ground in ending employment discrimination in the defense industries and school segregation in the war years and beyond.