U. S. Constitution, African Americans
(Ithaca Home Schoolers)
(http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/guides/constitution.html)
Compiled by Eric Kofi Acree, Librarian
Finding Background
Material
Searching Techniques
Finding Books
Selected Books
Finding Articles
Local Bibliographies
Web Sites
Finding Background Material (Encyclopedias):
The materials listed below are a selection of reference resources for finding background information and context for topics you will be covering in this class. Note the call numbers and library locations for these materials and check the reference collections for additional sources of background information.
Affirmative Action: An Encyclopedia
(2 volumes) Africana Library Reference HF 5549.5 .A34 A426 2004
More than 500 A-Z entries--illustrated and cross-referenced--offer current,
accurate, and detailed information significantly related to affirmative
action, including coverage of concepts, court cases, ethnic and social
groups, events, government agencies, individuals, issues, laws, and
movements.
African American Chronology (2
volumes) Africana Library Reference E 185 .H62 1994
This reference can be used to explore significant social, political,
economic, cultural and educational milestones in African American history
beginning in 1492, and ending in 1993.
African American Encylopedia (6
volumes) Africana Library Reference E 185 .A255
Organized in traditional encyclopedic format, the six volumes features
entries on people, organizations, landmarks, professions, entertainment,
militrary activity, religion, family life, politics, court cases, cultural
movements, and other facets of life that have a unique expression among
African Americans.
Civil Rights in the United States (2
volumes) Africana Library Reference E 184 .A1 C47x 2000
This text covers the African-American struggle for civil rights and
civil rights issues in the United States. Topics examined include biographies,
political and social issues and historical events.
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture
& History Africana Library Reference E 185 .E54 1996 (Also
on Africana CD-ROM and can be accessed in History
Resource Center)
This multi-volume set presents the lives and significance of African
Americans in the broadest way possible. This encyclopedia has biographical
entries, as well as entries dealing with events, historical eras, legal
cases, areas of cultural achievement (music, architecture, the visual
arts), professions, sports, and places.
Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America
(Three volumes) Africana Library Reference E 185.61 .E544x 1998
This three-volume set contains 683 alphabetically arranged articles
that explore the history, meaning, & application of civil rights
issues in the United States.
Major Acts of Congress (Three
volumes) Uris Library Reference KF 154 .M35x 2004
There are 262 acts selected in this three-volume set. Selections were
made based on such criteria as historical significance, contemporary
impact, and potential contribution to the understanding of American
government; hundreds of additional acts are mentioned within the entries
and are accessible via the index.
West's Encyclopedia of American Law
(12 volumes) Uris Library Reference KF 154 .W47x 1997
The only major examination of the American legal system written for
a non-legal audience.
Whether you are clicking your way across the Web, searching for resources in the Cornell Library Catalog, or looking for scholarly articles in specialized subject databases, being aware of a few simple techniques can improve the effectiveness of your searches.
Do you know how to use the following search techniques?
- keywords vs. phrase searching
- boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT (for combining search terms)
- truncation and wildcard symbols (for finding singular, plural, and other keyword variations)
- field searching (for narrowing a search to specific parts of a record)
- controlled vocabulary (subject headings)
See the following sites for details on how to refine
and perfect your search results:
Introduction
to Database Searching Skills
Search
Strategies
Finding Books:
Cornell Library Online Catalog
About the CU Library Catalog:
The Cornell University Library Catalog includes the holdings of 19 Cornell
University libraries. (The Weill Cornell Medical Library, located in
New York City, has a separate catalog.) The catalog contains records
for books, computer files, government documents, manuscripts and archives,
maps, musical scores, periodicals, serials, sound recordings, and visual
materials received and cataloged since 1973. There are also records
for most pre-1973 items, and for items that are on order or in process.
You can limit your search to type of material and location.
Anderson, James Anderson
and Dara N. Byrne. The Unfinished Agenda of Brown v. Board of Education.
Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley & Sons, 2004.
Distinguished thinkers discuss the state of public school integration
today Published in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Brown v.
Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared
that separate school facilities were inherently unequal, this collection
of essays reflects on how far we've come since 1954-and how far we still
need to go. Contributors-black, white, Asian, and Hispanic-include civil
rights activist and jurist Derrick Bell, noted journalist Juan Williams,
Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, and NPR's Tavis Smiley,
who provides an introduction and thoughtful commentary on each essay.
Bell, Derrick. Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision could become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the persistence of segregated and ineffective schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent. Derrick Bell here shatters this shining image of one of the Court's most celebrated rulings. He notes that prior to Brown and despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. And while Brown recognized racial injustice, it left racial barriers intact. Given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court might better have determined - for the first time - to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than proof of blatant discrimination. Rather, we must devise tactics, take actions, and even adopt stances that expose and challenge these silent covenants that serve to maintain the racial status quo.
Cottrol, Robert J. Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
This new study of Brown - the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia - offers an insightful and original overview designed expressly for students and general readers. It is concise, up-to-date, highly readable, and very teachable." "The book traces the lengthy court litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and including incisive portraits of key players, including co-plaintiff Oliver Brown, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, who recognized the crucial importance of a unanimous court decision and helped produce it. The authors simply but powerfully narrate the obstacles these individuals faced and the opportunities they grasped and clearly show that there was much more at stake than educational rights. Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste - it also changed our view of the Court's role in American life.
Franklin, John Hope and Genna Ree McNeil, eds. African Americans and the Living Constitution. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.
African Americans and the Living Constitution is a collection
of essays and articles by prominent lawyers, judges, and legal scholars
on the African American experience and how it got that way. They bring
varying perspectives to some aspect or another of the African American
role in the Constitution's progression from its proslavery beginnings
to the document it has become today. It is a book largely, though not
exclusively, for and about lawyers, and likely of interest mostly to
lawyers and scholars. It would be well-suited as a scholastic aid in
a seminar or law school class about constitutional law, race, and the
Constitution, or race and political and social policy.
Fireside, Harvey. Separate and Unequal: Homer
Plessy and the Supreme Court Decision that Legalized Racism. New
York: Carroll & Graf, 2004.
On June 7, 1892, Homer A. Plessy, a New Orleans shoemaker, white in appearance but Negro according to the "one drop" rule that discriminated against anyone with even a small fraction of African blood by that injurious label, boarded a "Whites Only" railroad coach. He then volunteered his lineage to the conductor, who ordered that he move to a car set aside by state law for Negroes-and so began the legal crusade that culminated in one of the most tragic and dishonorable decisions in Supreme Court history. Here, acclaimed historian Professor Harvey Fireside presents a powerful account of Plessy v. Ferguson, the famously unlawful ruling that institutionalized racism and helped inspire the civil rights movement. Separate and Unequal combines judicial records and historic photographs with a richly evocative portrait of Jim Crow-era Louisiana and a tale of the personal heroism of Homer Plessy; lawyer Albion Tourgée, who argued his case pro bono; and Justice John Marshall Harlan, the decision's sole dissenter, who argued fervently against the Court majority opinion that "separate but equal" accommodations were not unjust and demeaning. With sophistication and passion, Fireside shares a history less renowned but every bit as explosively influential as that of Rosa Parks.
Lively, Donald E. The Constitution and Race. New York, NY: Praeger, 1992.
This volume examines the manner in which constitutional jurisprudence concerning race has originated, developed, and remained unsatisfactory in its response to racial equality and civil rights issues from the time of the Constitutional Convention to the present day. Donald E. Lively discusses compelling and ever-timely issues: among them slavery, civil rights, voting rights, segregation, and fairness in education, housing, and law enforcement. This book is rich in its analysis of the Supreme Court's response to society's ambiguities, concerns, and conscience in the matters of race.
Marsha J. Tyson Darling, ed. Race, Voting, and Redistricting and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Fifteenth Amendment. New York; London: Routledge, 2001. v.3
Political redistricting is one of the most controversial issues in contemporary American society. The practice of shaping voting districts to enhance the political representation of minorities at all levels of government emerged as a legal remedy for redressing the systematic historical exclusion of minority political representation. It continues to have vocal and active defenders and detractors to this day with court rulings upholding or challenging the practice every year. The controversies of redistricting have challenged America's commitment to participatory democracy and America's ability to account for its historical record of voting and racial discrimination. The legal and historical arguments addressing the policy of redistricting and the constitutional issues surrounding it revolve around interpretations of the Fifteenth Amendment and America's ability to accept or reject race-based solutions to political representstion.
Nieman, Donald G. Promises to Keep:
African-Americans and the Constitutional Order, 1776 to the Present.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
African-Americans have had an ambivalent relationship with the Constitution
for more than two hundred years. Throughout most of American history,
racist interpretations of the Constitution have sanctioned a legal system
supportive of slavery, marked blacks as inferiors, rendered them politically
powerless, and denied them justice and access to society's resources.
Yet both black and white opponents of slavery and racial subordination--from
antebellum abolitionists to twentieth-century civil rights leaders--have
found principles in the Constitution that support their demands for
freedom, citizenship, and equality.In Promises to Keep, Donald G. Nieman
tells the story of this paradoxical relationship, tracing it from the
birth of the Republic to current battles over school segregation, voting
rights, and affirmative action. While Nieman examines the devastating
effects of constitutionally sanctioned racism on the lives of African-Americans,
he also shows how blacks and their white allies have been active agents
of constitutional change since the early nineteenth century, forging
an egalitarian constitutionalism and using it to press a reluctant nation
to honor its long-deferred promise of equality. Compact, lively, and
readable, Promises to Keep illuminates the past and offers a fresh perspective
on the current debate over civil rights, showing how it too often ignores
the tragic history of law and race in America.
Ogletree, Charles. All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the doctrine of "separate but equal" was unconstitutional. Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., was not even two at the time, and his family, farm workers in southern California, had scant knowledge of how keenly the ruling would affect them. In All Deliberate Speed Ogletree examines the personal ramifications of the decision for him and his family—his childhood in the wake of the Brown decision, his student days at Stanford and Harvard Law, his immersion in the Boston busing crisis—and its meaning for all Americans. Presenting a vivid pageant of historical characters including Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Earl Warren, Anita Hill, and Clarence Thomas, Ogletree discusses the ambivalence of our judicial system, the increasing legal challenges to affirmative action, and the issue of reparations. Informed throughout by brilliant legal insight, All Deliberate Speed compellingly traces the history of race and integration in American society, and will promote intense debate and reconsideration.
Presser, Stephen B. Recapturing the Constitution: Race, Religion, and Abortion Reconsidered. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Pub.; Lanham, MD: Distributed by National Book Network, 1994.
Recapturing the Constitution: Race, Religion, and Abortion Reconsidered claims that our wayward courts are partly responsible for our current societal ills and calls for a moral and cultural renewal by turning back to our Framers' understanding of law and society." "Presser illuminates the original understanding of the Constitution by exploring the decisions of the earliest federal judges, those who interpreted it closest in time to its ratification. What he finds is that these judges, as well as the Framers themselves, believed in an inextricable link between law and morality. Unlike the proponents of today's self-fulfillment culture, the Founders realized that in order for a society to prosper there needs to be a delicate balance struck between individual liberty and individual responsibility to the community." "When constitutional jurisprudence is returned to the original understanding. Presser contends, we will reject government mandated, race-conscious remedies, including most affirmative action, race-norming, or quota programs, and return to a "color-blind" Constitution; we will return to an understanding of the First Amendment which permitted state and local governments to promote religion on a non-sectarian basis; and we will allow state governments to decide the extent to which they wish to regulate abortion without interference from the federal courts.
Underwood, James Lowell and W. Lewis Burke, Jr, eds. At freedom's Door: African American Founding Fathers and Lawyers in Reconstruction South Carolina. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2000.
At Freedom's Door rescues from obscurity the identities, images, and long-term contributions of black leaders who helped to rebuild South Carolina after the Civil War. In seven essays, the contributors to the volume explore the role of African Americans in government and law during Reconstruction in the Palmetto State. Bringing into focus a legacy not fully recognized, the contributors collectively demonstrate the legal acumen displayed by prominent African Americans and the impact these individuals had on the enactment of substantial constitutional reforms - many of which, though abandoned after Reconstruction, would be resurrected in the twentieth century.
Periodical indexes and abstracts are resources that identify and locate articles in journals, magazines, newspapers and books. Increasingly indexes are now available as online databases that will often provide access to the full text of the articles contained in these publications.
Black Studies On Disc (1989-present)
Africana CD-ROM or
Index to Black Periodicals Africana Periodicals (1984-2004) Z1361.N39
I38 (Also in Olin)
Information on materials by and about African
Americans, Africa and peoples of African ancestry. Includes catalog
of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and citations
from the Index to Black periodicals.
Black
Studies Database: Kaiser Index to Black Resources (1948-1986)
C overs events critical to the study of Black life and culture outside
of Africa including notable figures in Black history, culture, and sports;
the Civil Rights Movement; the growth of the NAACP and the National
Urban League; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; jazz and
soul music; ... from more than 150 publications relevant to the Black
experience and African Diaspora.
Ethnic
News Watch
Ethnic NewsWatch is a full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines
and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press.
HarpWeek:
Electronic Access to Harper's Weekly (1857-1912)
An index to Harper's weekly magazine, presented in an alphabetical,
multi-level structure familiar to scholars, reference librarians, and
students alike. Also contains browsable full text of Harper's weekly.
Historical
Abstracts
This historical periodical database includes annotated references to
the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the U.S.
andCanada which are covered in "America: History and Life").
Covers over 2000 journals, including historical journals from almost
every country and selections of journals in the social sciences and
humanities for researchers and students of history.
History
Resource Center
Provides an integrated collection of primary documents, secondary reference
sources, and journal articles covering all areas of U.S. history from
pre-colonial times to the present day. Includes full-text coverage of
approximately 65 periodicals of interest to students and historians
as well as access to the citations for history journals from the Arts
& humanities citation index.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a fully-searchable database containing the back issues of several
hundred scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics,
music, ecology and botany, business, and other fields. It includes the
following collections: Arts & sciences I, II and III, General science,
Ecology and botany, Business, Language and literature.
LexisNexis
Academic
Provides access to full text resources on topics including current and
general news; business and financial information; newspapers; company
directories; government and politics; medical and health topics; accounting,
auditing, and tax; federal and state laws; legal cases; and regulations.
Resources include TV and radio news transcripts.
Periodical
Abstracts
Available as part of the ProQuest Direct system, Periodical Abstracts
indexes and abstracts an extensive number of periodicals, covering general
interest magazines and scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities
and sciences.
PCI
(Periodicals Content Index) (1770-1993)
Electronic index to thousands of periodicals in the humanities and social
sciences, covering each periodical from its first issue. Every article
is indexed. The scope is international, including journals in English,
French, German, Italian, Spanish and other languages.
ProQuest
Historical Newspapers
This database offers full-text and full-image articles for newspapers
dating back to the 19th century. For most titles, the collection includes
digital reproductions of every page from every issue, cover to cover,
in downloadable PDF files. The database is an ongoing project. The New
York Times, 1851-2001 -- The Wall Street Journal, 1889-1987 -- The Washington
Post, 1877-1988.
Local Bibliographies:
Jim Crow Bibliography (http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/guides/jimcrow.html)
Civil Rights Movement, African American Women (http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/guides/crmwomen.html)
Reparations, African Americans (http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/guides/reparations.html)
15th Amendment to the Constitution (http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/15thamendment.html)
Brown vs. Board of Education Bibliography (http://www.arl.org/diversity/naacp.html)
Our Documents: 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=44)
Buffalo
Soliders and the Constitution (http://www.nps.gov/foda/Fort_Davis_WEB_PAGE/About_the_Fort/Buffalo_Soldiers_Constitution_Overview.htm)
