Civil Rights Since 1787 - by Jonathan Birnbaum & Clarence Taylor (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2001 Gustavus Myers Program Book Award.

Traces the black struggle for civil rights back to 1787

Contrary to simple textbook tales, the civil rights movement did not arise spontaneously in 1954 with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. The black struggle for civil rights can be traced back to the arrival of the first Africans, and to their work in the plantations, manufacturies, and homes of the Americas. Civil rights was thus born as labor history.

Civil Rights Since 1787 tells the story of that struggle in its full context, dividing the struggle into six major periods, from slavery to Reconstruction, from segregation to the Second Reconstruction, and from the current backlash to the future prospects for a Third Reconstruction. The "prize" that the movement has sought has often been reduced to a quest for the vote in the South. But all involved in the struggle have always known that the prize is much more than the vote, that the goal is economic as well as political. Further, in distinction from other work, Civil Rights Since 1787 establishes the links between racial repression and the repression of labor and the left, and emphasizes the North as a region of civil rights struggle.

Featuring the voices and philosophies of orators, activists, and politicians, this anthology emphasizes the role of those ignored by history, as well as the part that education and religion have played in the movement. Civil Rights Since 1787 serves up an informative mix of primary documents and secondary analysis and includes the work of such figures as Ella Baker, Mary Frances Berry, Clayborne Carson, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Eric Foner, Herb Gutman, Fannie Lou Hamer, A. Leon Higginbotham, Darlene Clark Hine, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Manning Marable, Nell Painter, Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, A. Philip Randolph, Mary Church Terrell, and Howard Zinn.

Review Quotes

"An unusually challenging illumination of our still very unfinished history of equal protection of the laws. No classroom, library, or legislature at any level should be without it, and nearly everyone will want to argue with parts of it."--Nat Hentoff, author of Living the Bill of Rights and Free Speech for MeBut Not for Thee

"As a reference book, Civil Rights Since 1787 serves as an outstanding source. The book gives a lucid account of the history of institutional slavery and racism in America that is all too often perplexing when presented by educational texts."-- "Chicago Streetwise"

"Civil Rights Since 1787 is one of those rare documentary collections that rewrites history. Birnbaum and Taylor not only take a long and wide view of the movement, but they persuasively re-define civil rights to encompass many criticle struggles for social justice. This book is indispensable."--Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

"Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor have plumbed historical documents to produce a study that has both truth and urgency. . . . You could not do better than this book."-- "Jewish Currents"

"This is a particularly valuable collection, an excellent reader on the struggle for racial equality."--Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

About the Author

Jonathan Birnbaum (Editor)
Jonathan Birnbaum is the editor, with Bertell Ollman, of The United States Constitution: 200 Years of Anti-Federalist, Abolitionist, Feminist, Muckraking, Progressive, and Especially Socialist Criticism (also available from NYU Press). His work has appeared in The Guardian, New Politics, Socialism & Democracy, New Political Science, and other publications. He lives in Illinois.

Clarence Taylor (Editor)
Clarence Taylor is Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College. He is the author of several books, including The Black Churches of Brooklyn from the 19th Century to the Civil Rights Era (Columbia, 1994); Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century (Routledge, 2002); and Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (NYU Press, 2018), and (co)editor of books including Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader in the Black Struggle (NYU Press, 2000).