Books like From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: 100 fan favorites

The South is endlessly fascinating to history fans, and Prof. Huebner gives us short, thought-provoking biographies of six important Southern state judges. He recounts the contributions that each judge made to American law – for example, Virginia chief justice Spencer Roane's ultimately futile effort to persuade Americans that state courts could interpret the federal Constitution for themselves, independent of federal authority; Tennessee Justice John Catron's efforts to embed Jacksonian principles in American law; and North Carolina chief justice Thomas Ruffin's clear-eyed assessment of the inherent conflict between slaveowners' views of slaves as human beings and as tools for maximizing agricultural production and profit. Huebner skillfully combines fascinating personal stories with sharp insights into each judge's legal legacy. 

In 1882, only a few years after it enacted a series of landmark civil rights laws, Congress passed an Exclusion Act slamming the door on Chinese immigration. Why the dramatic turnaround? A powerful anti-Chinese movement, driven by racism and fear of economic competition, had taken hold among whites in the West and had produced a wave of anti-Asian state laws. Americans east of the Rockies didn't share Western sentiments, but eventually Eastern politicians yielded in order to attract Western votes. Gyory gives us an absorbing picture of the exclusion movement, of Western anti-Chinese leaders, and of the Easterners who went along with them. His book is a stark reminder that good people's indifference can contribute to the triumph of evil.

Although he is virtually unknown today, New York chancellor James Kent ranks as one of America's greatest state judges. Kent was an old-time Federalist, a believer in government by gentlemen. During his lifetime his views steadily lost ground to Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, but he made a permanent imprint on American law. Among other things, he authored the first general treatise on American law and arranged for national circulation of New York judicial decisions, thus giving his state an outsize role in shaping American law, and he helped preserve the central place of federal authority and protection of private property in the law. Kent deserves a modern biography, but until one is written, readers interested in New York history and legal history will find John Horton's older 1939 biography a lively and easy-to-read book, well worth their time.

Jefferson's Louisiana is an absorbing study of a clash of cultures that helped to shape America's legal empire as it moved westward. Louisiana, governed by Spain and France under civil law codes for nearly a century before it became part of the United States, was a crossroads at which English law (dominant elsewhere in the new nation) and European law collided. Prof. Dargo first describes the uneasy cultural accommodation that French and Spanish settlers made with American immigrants at the turn of the nineteenth century, an accommodation made more challenging by Aaron Burr's simultaneous efforts to foment revolution in the trans-Appalachian West. Dargo then tells the story of how American and old-settler jurists collaborated to shape a new Louisiana code amalgamating common and civil law. 

The through-line in this picture book biography is Thurgood Marshall's quest for change, which the author says started early in his life. Marshall grew up in Baltimore under segregation. His parents wanted greater opportunities for their children. Marshall pushed against racial boundaries in college and beyond. As a young lawyer he won an early court order desegregating a school, and went on to argue a series of landmark desegregation cases before the Supreme Court. After becoming the first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice, he continued to push for change by persuading his colleagues on the bench. This book highlights the Court's ability to make change and honors a trailblazing man who left a lasting legacy. Helpful back matter includes a timeline and list of important Supreme Court cases.

We often learn about African American history in the 20th Century in terms of a conflict between nonviolent resistance vs. violent radicalism, integrationism vs. separatism, Martin vs. Malcolm. But this is an over-simplification of a complex and dynamic moment in the history of our nation. More than any other work, Black is a Country helped me think differently about the period that I study, and see African American history and culture of the mid-20th Century in a new way.

This book was the kind of post-Trump election awakening that made me feel unapologetic about the way I saw myself as a Black American.

The writing vividly expresses the rage and determination of marginalized voices in a way that’s beyond poignant, but intentional.

Blow, a respected journalist in his own right, pulls from history and current events to make a case for something ambitious: Reverse Black migration as a means of combating racial injustice in the South. 

Faces at the Bottom of the Well is the book that created Critical Race Theory. It lays out the central problem of Critical Race Theory: how does racism consistently defeat law? For example, in 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education held that segregated schools are unlawful. Yet, sixty-nine years later, US schools, housing, and employment all remain segregated. This is the book that inspired every other critical race theory scholar.

As Good as Anybody is the story of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in the south and experienced racial discrimination.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Europe and experienced anti-Semitism. These two men formed a close friendship. They marched together and prayed together. They became leaders for social justice and acceptance.

I am recommending this book because it is a wonderful story about two men who tried to break the barriers of race and religion.

More than a century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott, a schoolteacher named Elizabeth Jennings did the same on a streetcar in New York City. Her act of courage didn’t lead to a mass movement, but it did lead to a court case—which she won with the help of her lawyer, future U.S. president Chester A. Arthur.

I chose this book because it’s so important to recall that segregation wasn’t only in the South, and that the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s built on a long history of resistance going back to the first slave ships that arrived on America’s shores.