Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader

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Praise for Race and Liberty in America “Race and Liberty in America is the race and civil rights anthology we have been waiting for. In our politicized age we often think of civil rights as a movement of racial pride and identity. But Martin Luther King’s movement succeeded precisely because it used the principles of classical liberalism to shatter the idea that race or identity could be a source of entitlement. . . . This book is a timely and necessary corrective.” —Shelby Steele, author, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America “Readers will find a wealth of information in Bean’s outstanding book Race and Liberty in America, a collection of primary source materials covering the great historical debates over race and ethnicity in America. Students, educators, civic leaders, and general readers can all greatly benefit from the book.” —Carol M. Swain, Professor of Political Science and Law, Vanderbilt University; author, Black Faces, Black Interests “If you are interested in the real history of the civil rights movement in America—the radical ideas that set it in motion no matter where they came from— get ready for an intellectual thrill ride. There is no time for political posturing here. Race and Liberty in America is full of revelations and stunning in its honesty.” —Juan Williams, Senior Correspondent, National Public Radio; author, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 and Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary “A wonderful collection of fascinating documents. . . . Race and Liberty in America deserves a wide audience and will enrich the reader’s understanding of the nation’s most difficult and troubling domestic issue.” —Stephan Thernstrom, Winthrop Research Professor of History, Harvard University ; coauthor, America in Black and White “Race and Liberty in America is indeed essential reading. All too often classical liberals are attacked for their indifference or insensitivity on matters of race. This superb collection of material dispels that illusion.” —Richard A. Epstein, James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago “Race and Liberty in America is a history buff’s dream. Bean has carefully and judiciously chosen the most significant speeches, documents, and journalistic works pertaining to the government’s treatment of blacks from slavery to modern times. . . . If you want a real feel for the civil rights battles your teachers and professors never taught you about, here it is.” —Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News; author, Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America “Jonathan Bean forces the open-minded reader to think in new ways about the relationship between liberty and equality in the American experience with his shrewd selections of seminal documents and astute explanations of the same. Race and Liberty in America represents a powerful tool for understanding that government in the United States has often been the agent of oppression, something that has too often been forgotten in the last generation or so. Bean unashamedly lets the evidence speak for itself that the freedom of the individual has most often flourished when governments have been bridled and too often stifled when they interfered.” —Robert J. Norrell, Bernadotte Schmitt Chair of Excellence and Professor of History, University of Tennessee; author, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington “Race and Liberty in America is indispensable—perhaps the best collection of source documents on the subject ever gathered. Best of all, this terrific book dispels any notion that civil rights are synonymous with racial preferences or that immigration restriction promotes liberty.” —Linda L. Chavez, former Staff Director, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; author, Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation “Race and Liberty in America is destined to become a standard source on the American classical liberal, antiracist tradition. In this magisterial anthology, Jonathan Bean mines a rich vein of sources. Many 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 forgotten antiracist crusaders as the entrepreneur Lewis Tappan, who was the essential financial angel of abolitionism, NAACP super-lawyer Moorfield Storey, frontier novelist Rose Wilder Lane, and black Republican congressman Oscar De Priest. The selections also contain surprising new information about such better-known individuals as Frederick Douglass, Warren G. Harding, Milton Friedman, and Zora Neale Hurston.” —David...