Customer Reviews

Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader (Independent Studies in Political Economy)

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If you rely on the professors who dominate campuses today for your knowledge of history, Race and Liberty in America will be full of major revelations. The writings in this book provide an eye-opening introduction to a rich antiracist tradition which historians have shamelessly ignored. In this magisterial anthology, Jonathan Bean mines a rich vein of writings and other speeches by the great classical liberal and conservative pioneers against racism, many of whom helped to create the modern civil rights movement. Many of these works have never appeared before in book form. The selections cover such diverse topics as the fight for abolitionism and the allied struggles against Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow and Japanese internment.

Bean introduces modern readers to such critically important, but now forgotten, anti-racist crusaders as entrepreneur Lewis Tappan, who was the essential financial angel of abolitionism, NAACP superlawyer Moorfield Storey, frontier novelist Rose Wilder Lane, and black Republican congressman Oscar DePriest.

The selections also contain surprising new information about such better known individuals as Frederick Douglass, Warren G. Harding, Milton Friedman, and Zora Neale Hurston. Please buy this wonderful book!

As Juan Williams said, this book is "full of revelations" Some of the figures (Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Branch Rickey) are well known but others (Calvin Coolidge, Kelly Miller, the dean of Howard U) are not. Americans hunger for "getting beyond race" by tackling TRUE racial injustices while always recognizing that race is a dangerous fiction that no government ought to respect in the ways it treats citizens. That's what these writers did -- and still do.

I learned a lot and hope teachers assign this book so that students can get another point of view.

This book was chocked full of interesting information. The author does a great tracing the rise of civil rights in the U.S., giving a balanced look at the topic. He examines great men that were an integral part of the movement and puts a different spin on the topic than most. He uses a ton of primary sources and this book is a well-researched volume. I learned a lot and highly recommend it.

I read this in awe. I was amazed to see how the Democrats have taken the civil rights to its depraved end. Republicans are not to wear too much pride here because they allowed it. No longer can folks be motivated to be the best they can no matter their color. If they are the best the left's forces take that pride with the stigma of "you made it because your in the quota, not because you are good enough." This book must read for anyone interested in where all the discrimination against Asians will end.

Finally some balance.The left has monopolized the struugle aginst slavery, especially since the "New Deal".This book provides the long overdue balance.Remember! The Democrats were the party of the slave owning south while Lincoln was the very first Republican!The GOP thwen split between TR and Taft.I am sick of people with funnels for brains fitting everything into a compartment to avoid thinking -intellectual laziness of the first order.Academics are particularly prey to this.