Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown

Portada
University of Chicago Press, 2010 M02 15 - 308 páginas
Many have questioned FDR's record on race, suggesting that he had the opportunity but not the will to advance the civil rights of African Americans. Kevin J. McMahon challenges this view, arguing instead that Roosevelt's administration played a crucial role in the Supreme Court's increasing commitment to racial equality—which culminated in its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

McMahon shows how FDR's attempt to strengthen the presidency and undermine the power of conservative Southern Democrats dovetailed with his efforts to seek racial equality through the federal courts. By appointing a majority of rights-based liberals deferential to presidential power, Roosevelt ensured that the Supreme Court would be receptive to civil rights claims, especially when those claims had the support of the executive branch.

Dentro del libro

Contenido

The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down
1
RightsCentered Liberalism and Legal Realism in the Early New Deal Years
24
The Modern Presidency and the Enemies of Institutional Reform
61
The Politics of Creating the Roosevelt Court
97
Southern Democracy Lynch Law and the Roosevelt Justice Department
144
Truman Eisenhower and the Civil Rights Decisions
177
The Road the Court Trod
203
Notes
223
Works Cited
269
Index
287
Derechos de autor

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 252 - If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States...
Página 253 - District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such inhabitant being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both...
Página 152 - Misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law, is action taken 'under color of
Página 259 - If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
Página 46 - Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies. But the argument necessarily stops short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority. Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.
Página 185 - ... descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in...
Página 256 - The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world.
Página 76 - The vital need is not an alteration of our fundamental law, but an increasingly enlightened view with reference to it.

Acerca del autor (2010)

Kevin J. McMahon is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the State University of New York, Fredonia.

Información bibliográfica