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In this examination of more than 175 lynchings, Stephen J. Leonard illustrates the role economics, migration, race, and gender played in shaping justice and injustice in Colorado. One of the first comprehensive studies of the phenomenon in a Western state, the book has been an essential complement to studies of Southern lynchings, demonstrating that at times the land of purple mountain's majesty was just as lynching-prone as the land of Dixie. Lynching in Colorado, 1859-1919 shows Westerners at their worst and their best as they struggled to define law and order.
Mob violence in the United States is usually associated with the southern lynch mobs who terrorized African Americans during the Jim Crow era. In Forgotten Dead, William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb uncover a comparatively neglected chapter in the story of American racial violence, the lynching of persons of Mexican origin or descent. Over eight decades lynch mobs murdered hundreds of Mexicans, mostly in the American Southwest. Racial prejudice, a lack of respect for local courts, and economic competition all fueled the actions of the mob. Sometimes ordinary citizens committed these acts because of the alleged failure of the criminal justice system; other times the culprits were law enforcemen...
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Here, Owen Gutfreund offers a fascinating look at how highways have dramatically transformed American communities nationwide, aiding growth and development in unsettled areas and undermining existing urban centers. Gutfreund uses a "follow the money" approach, showing how government policies subsidized suburban development and fueled a chronic nationwide dependence on cars and roadbuilding, with little regard for expense, efficiency, ecological damage, or social equity. The consequence was a combination of unstoppable suburban sprawl, along with ballooning municipal debt burdens, deteriorating center cities, and profound changes in American society and culture. Gutfreund tells the story via ...
Now a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, Self Made (formerly titled On Her Own Ground) is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.
Soon to be a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, On Her Own Ground is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.
In 1917, as the United States prepared for war in Europe, Army Surgeon General William C. Gorgas recognized the threat of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to American troops. What the Army needed was some "good tuberculosis men." Despite the efforts of the nations best "tuberculosis men," the disease would become a leading cause of World War I disability discharges and veterans benefits. The fact that tuberculosis patients often experienced cycles in which they recovered their health and then fell ill again challenged government officials to judge the degree to which a person was disabled and required government care and support. This book tracks the impact of tuberculosis on the US Army from the late 1890s, when it was a ubiquitous presence in society, to the 1960s when it became a curable and controllable disease.
"Ranging from personal correspondence to courtroom transcripts to journalistic accounts, Christopher Waldrep has extensively mined an enormous quantity of documents about lynching, which he arranges chronologically with concise introductions. He reveals that lynching has been part of American history since the Revolution, but its victims, perpetrators, causes, and environments have changed over time. From the American Revolution to the expansion of the western frontier, Waldrep shows how communities defended lynching as a way to maintain law and order."--Publisher description.
What can we learn from a high-country valley tucked into an isolated corner of Rocky Mountain National Park? In this pathbreaking book, Thomas Andrews offers a meditation on the environmental and historical pressures that have shaped and reshaped one small stretch of North America, from the last ice age to the advent of the Anthropocene and the latest controversies over climate change. Large-scale historical approaches continue to make monumental contributions to our understanding of the past, Andrews writes. But they are incapable of revealing everything we need to know about the interconnected workings of nature and human history. Alongside native peoples, miners, homesteaders, tourists, a...