A book that Emily mentioned in this past Sunday's
roundup caught my eye:
Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (Cambridge University Press, April 2014), by political scientist
Megan Ming Francis (University of Washington). A description from the Press:
Did the civil rights movement impact the development of the American
state? Despite extensive accounts of civil rights mobilization and
narratives of state building, there has been surprisingly little
research that explicitly examines the importance and consequence that
civil rights activism has had for the process of state building in
American political and constitutional development. 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, and secured the support
of Congress. In the NAACP's most far-reaching victory, the Supreme Court
ruled that the constitutional rights of black defendants were violated
by a white mob in the landmark criminal procedure decision Moore v.
Dempsey. This book demonstrates the importance of citizen agency in the
making of new constitutional law in a period unexplored by previous
scholarship.
A few blurbs:
"Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State is
an outstanding contribution to the fields of race and politics, American
political development, and legal studies. Drawing on rich archival
sources, Francis redefines our understanding of the early civil rights
movement, the NAACP, and its relationship to the American presidency and
Congress. Her research forces us to revise our understanding of the
complicated relationships between early twentieth-century presidents and
the black movement for racial justice. This work also sharply
highlights how social movement organizations tack back and forth between
multiple strategies to achieve their goals. Students of American
politics, history, legal studies, race and politics, and social
movements will all find this a must-read." -- Michael C. Dawson
"In
this original, incisive, and empirically convincing book, Megan Ming
Francis documents how the NAACP’s manifold political challenges to
racial violence in the early twentieth century contributed to the
development of the modern American constitutional state. Along the way,
Francis illustrates why historical institutional analysts should grant
greater attention to the important roles of organized citizen groups in
shaping civil rights law and national legal authority. The book is a
brilliant and important achievement." -- Michael McCann
More information is available
here.
