The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-keeping from 1831 to 1965Columbia University Press, 1999 - 373 páginas From the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement one hundred years later, one of the primary characteristics of America's development as a nation has been the steady struggle for and expansion of the horizons of citizenship. Pivotal in any equal rights movement is the response of the White House: how the president addresses any such movement profoundly affects its chances for success. Russell L. Riley examines the logic of presidential behavior with regard to equality movements. Focusing on the most explosive and enduring of such movements--the struggle for social and economic parity by African Americans--Riley argues that the president's unwritten mandate as the designated protector of domestic social order is to suppress or moderate major social change. Consequently, only in extreme circumstances have presidents become advocates of serious reform. The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality goes beyond the triad of Lincoln, Kennedy, and Johnson with discussions of F.D.R., Truman, and Eisenhower to see how these presidents dealt with situations that forced them into the fray. Riley questions the positive role played by some presidents--and contends that their failure to suppress racial unrest has not been adequately discussed.As Riley convincingly demonstrates, American political culture made it unlikely that any president would invest executive power in a deeply controversial enterprise. His study goes far toward explaining why significant change has been slow to take hold, even in one of the most open democratic systems in the world. |
Contenido
Introduction | 1 |
The Origins and Politics of Abolition | 25 |
The Presidency and the Abolitionists | 43 |
The Making of a Great Emancipator | 93 |
Latency Years | 121 |
Roosevelt and Truman | 137 |
The Eisenhower Years | 175 |
Pressures and Conversion 19611965 | 201 |
The Presidency Leadership and the Struggle for Racial Equality | 235 |
NOTES | 275 |
359 | |
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The Presidency and the Politics of Racial Inequality: Nation-keeping from ... Russell Lowell Riley Sin vista previa disponible - 1999 |
Términos y frases comunes
abolitionism abolitionists Abraham Lincoln action activists activity administration's advance African Americans agitation American Anti-Slavery Society American political antislavery attorney Bearing the Cross bill black America Brownell Buchanan Burk civil rights claims compromise conflict Congress congressional Constitution decision Democratic desegregation effect efforts Eisenhower Administration Eisenhower's election electoral emancipation Emancipation Proclamation executive favor federal FEPC force Franklin Freedom Rides Freehling Garrison Garrow Hoover initial institution issue Jackson James Johnson Justice Department Kansas Kennedy Kennedy's King labor leaders leadership legislative Liberator Little Rock Lyndon Johnson ment movement NAACP nation nation-keeping role nation-maintaining Negro northern organized party Philip Randolph Politics of Civil Polk president pressure Proclamation protest question Quoted race racial equality radicals Randolph Republican response Richard Rights Act Roosevelt Senate slaveholders slavery social sought South southern Texas tion Truman Union United University Press W. E. B. Du Bois Washington Washington D.C. White House York