You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Illinois State Historical Society Superior Achievement Award, 2013 As the first African American elected to the Illinois General Assembly, John W. E. Thomas was the recognized leader of the state’s African American community for nearly twenty years and laid the groundwork for the success of future Black leaders in Chicago politics. Despite his key role in the passage of Illinois’ first civil rights act and his commitment to improving his community against steep personal and political barriers, Thomas’s life and career have been long forgotten by historians and the public alike. This fascinating full-length biography—the first to address the full influence of Thomas or any Black polit...
As a Unionist but also proslavery state during the American Civil War, Kentucky occupied a contentious space both politically and geographically. In many ways, its pragmatic attitude toward compromise left it in a cultural no-man's-land. The constant negotiation between the state's nationalistic and Southern identities left many Kentuckians alienated and conflicted. Lincoln referred to Kentucky as the crown jewel of the Union slave states due to its sizable population, agricultural resources, and geographic position, and these advantages, coupled with the state's difficult relationship to both the Union and slavery, ultimately impacted the outcome of the war. Despite Kentucky's central role,...
Dispossessing : land and past -- Squaring the circles, filling the squares -- Settlers and transients -- Civil wars and silences -- Gilding the past -- Passersby, rich and penniless -- Reconstruction and race.
A loyal partisan and highly principled public official whose career overlapped with those of many legends of Illinois politics-including Mayor Richard J. Daley, Governor James Thompson, and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan-Democrat Philip J. Rock served twenty-two years in the Illinois Senate. Fourteen of those years were spent as senate president, the longest tenure anyone has served in that position. This nuanced political biography, which draws on dozens of interviews conducted by Ed Wojcicki to present the longtime senate president's story in his own words, is also a rare insider's perspective on Illinois politics in the last three decades of the twentieth century. A native of Chic...
This pioneering work brings together for the first time in a single reference work all of the extant, fugitive, and recently discovered registration data on African American voters from Colonial America to the present. It features election returns for African American presidential, senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial candidates over time. Rich, insightful narrative explains the data and traces the history of the laws dealing with the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Topics covered include: - The contributions of statistical pioneers including Monroe Work, W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Bunche - African American organizations, like the NAACP and National Equal Ri...
In this fascinating, theoretically informed case study of policy-making, Jack R. Van Der Slik demonstrates partisan politics in action in Illinois. Specifically, he shows how major changes in governing state universities were enacted over the objections of members of the higher education community, who preferred to maintain the status quo. In 1991, Republican Governor Jim Edgar, enthusiastically aided by Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra, began a political effort to decentralize the "system of systems", which had governed state universities since the 1960s. Despite partisan defeat of their plan in 1993, Edgar and Kustra managed to neutralize support for the status quo in the educational communi...
"As Mouser shows, Scott spent his life figuring out--and satisfying--men's interests with liquor, gambling, and women, and . . . [he] refused to be complicit in backing politicians who took him and the broader base of first-generation black voters for dupes. . . . Scott saw the political game for what it was: a game of power."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
None