New York's Grand Emancipation Jubilee

New York's Grand Emancipation Jubilee
Author: Alan J. Singer
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-04-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1438469721

In this book Alan J. Singer discusses the history of race and racism in the United States, emphasizing the continuing significance of slavery's past in shaping our present. Each chapter addresses a different theme in the history of slavery and the abolitionist struggle in the United States, with a focus on events and debates in New York State. Chapters examine the founders of the new nation and their views on slavery and equality; African American resistance; how abolitionists moved from the margins to the center of political debate; key players in the anti-slavery struggle such as David Ruggles, Solomon Northup, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Seward, and Abraham Lincoln; celebrations of freedom; as well as ongoing racism. Interspersed throughout the text are teaching notes that explore primary source documents and resources. The book draws on the latest scholarship to address and correct historical myths about both New York State before, during, and after the American Civil War, especially the pro-slavery, anti-civil rights stance of New York Copperhead Democrats in Congress, and the crucial role of Black and White abolitionists in ending slavery in the United States and challenging racial injustice. New York's Grand Emancipation Jubilee is not only an effort to include more African Americans as historical actors and celebrate their activism and achievements, but to provide an opportunity to analyze historical moments for change, explore their dynamic, and discover the conditions that make some of them successful.

Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley

Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley
Author: Michael E. Groth
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2017-04-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438464576

Explores the long-neglected rural dimensions of northern slavery and emancipation in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley. Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley focuses on the largely forgotten history of slavery in New York and the African American freedom struggle in the central Hudson Valley prior to the Civil War. Slaves were central actors in the drama that unfolded in the region during the Revolution, and they waged a long and bitter battle for freedom during the decades that followed. Slavery in the countryside was more oppressive than slavery in urban environments, and the agonizingly slow pace of abolition, constraints of rural poverty, and persistent racial hostility in the rural communities also presented formidable challenges to free black life in the central Hudson Valley. Michael E. Groth explores how Dutchess County’s black residents overcame such obstacles to establish independent community institutions, engage in political activism, and fashion a vibrant racial consciousness in antebellum New York. By drawing attention to the African American experience in the rural Mid-Hudson Valley, this book provides new perspectives on slavery and emancipation in New York, black community formation, and the nature of black identity in the Early Republic. “Groth provides a systematic overview focused on the history of African Americans in the Mid-Hudson Valley during the decades before the American Revolution through emancipation and during the national political struggle for abolition and the regional struggle for civil rights.” — Andor Skotnes, author of A New Deal for All? Race and Class Struggle in Depression-Era Baltimore

Social Studies for Secondary Schools

Social Studies for Secondary Schools
Author: Alan J. Singer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2024-05-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1040018068

Now in its fifth edition, this popular text for secondary social studies methods courses integrates discussions of educational goals and the nature of history and social studies with ideas for organizing social studies curricula, units, lessons, projects, and activities. Advocating an inquiry and activity-based view of social studies teaching that respects the points of view of students and teachers, it offers systematic support and open, honest advice for new teachers. Based in practice and experience, lesson ideas and materials in the book and online are designed to help new teachers address Common Core learning standards, to work in inclusive settings, and to promote literacy and the use of technology in social studies classrooms. Chapters include highlighted Learning Activities, Teaching Activities, and Classroom Activities designed to provoke discussion and illustrate different approaches to teaching social studies and conclude with recommendations for further reading. Features of the fifth edition include: Activities called "Think it over," "Add your voice to the discussion," "Try it yourself," and "It’s your classroom” at the end of each chapter New topics such as the 1619 Project controversy, Stop WOKE campaigns, academic freedom, and legal restraints on 7–12 teachers New content on teaching literacy, including writing, reading, media, computer, and oral literacies Approaches to teaching advanced placement, international baccalaureate, and dual enrollment classes Multi-disciplinary and project-based teaching that combines history and social studies with the social sciences and other academic disciplines Links to the NCSS 3-C framework Information on becoming a professional leader through involvement in organizations like the NCSS and teacher unions Designed for undergraduate and graduate pre-service social studies methods courses, this text is also useful for in-service training programs, as a reference for new social studies teachers, and as a resource for experienced social studies educators who are engaged in rethinking their teaching practice. This text is supported by online materials, including discussion questions, lesson ideas, and links to lesson materials and activity sheets. You can find the resources here: https://alansinger.net/social-studies-for-secondary-schools/

Teaching Climate History

Teaching Climate History
Author: Alan J. Singer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2021-12-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000480666

Welcome to the Anthropocene. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, human-caused climate change has impacted the globe with the burning of fossil fuels. The debate in classrooms and the political realm should not be whether climate change is happening or how much it places human civilization at risk but over how societies and individuals should respond. This interdisciplinary book offers an in-depth examination of the history of the Earth’s climate and how historians and citizens can influence contemporary climate debate and activism. The author explains climate history and climate science and makes this important subject matter accessible to a general audience. Chapter topics include examining the Earth’s geological past, the impact of climate on human evolution, the impact of climate on earlier civilizations, climate activism, and the need for international cooperation. Presenting climate history, human history, and climate science in a readable format and featuring resources for students, this book is meant for use by teachers in high school elective or an introductory college course setting.

The Lost Soul of the American Presidency

The Lost Soul of the American Presidency
Author: Stephen F. Knott
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0700630392

The American presidency is not what it once was. Nor, Stephen F. Knott contends, what it was meant to be. Taking on an issue as timely as Donald Trump’s latest tweet and old as the American republic, the distinguished presidential scholar documents the devolution of the American presidency from the neutral, unifying office envisioned by the framers of the Constitution into the demagogic, partisan entity of our day. The presidency of popular consent, or the majoritarian presidency that we have today, far predates its current incarnation. The executive office as James Madison, George Washington, and Alexander Hamilton conceived it would be a source of national pride and unity, a check on the tyranny of the majority, and a neutral guarantor of the nation’s laws. The Lost Soul of the American Presidency shows how Thomas Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800” remade the presidency, paving the way for Andrew Jackson to elevate “majority rule” into an unofficial constitutional principle—and contributing to the disenfranchisement, and worse, of African Americans and Native Americans. In Woodrow Wilson, Knott finds a worthy successor to Jefferson and Jackson. More than any of his predecessors, Wilson altered the nation’s expectations of what a president could be expected to achieve, putting in place the political machinery to support a “presidential government.” As difficult as it might be to recover the lost soul of the American presidency, Knott reminds us of presidents who resisted pandering to public opinion and appealed to our better angels—George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft, among others—whose presidencies suggest an alternative and offer hope for the future of the nation’s highest office.

Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century

Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century
Author: Marc Silver
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030136396

This book analyzes key aspects of Marx’s Capital with an eye towards its relevance for an understanding of issues confronting us in the 21st Century. The contributions to this volume suggest that while aspects of Marx’s original analysis must be adjusted to take into account changes that have occurred since its initial publication in 1867, his overall perspective remains necessary for understanding the nature of crises in 21st century. Part I emphasizes the central concepts Marx employed in Capital, including exploitation, capital accumulation, commodity fetishism, and his use of dialectics as a method for baring the underlying relations that define capitalism. Parts II and III extend that focus by addressing the concept of value, fictitious capital, credit and financialization. Parts IV and V offer analyses of several concrete manifestations of contemporary crises from national contexts (Europe, Latin America, China, and the United States). The volume argues that we have to combat the imperatives of capitalism to move towards a more humane and egalitarian future.

But One Race

But One Race
Author: Margaret Hope Bacon
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0791480429

Born in South Carolina to a wealthy white father and mixed race mother, Robert Purvis (1810–1898) was one of the nineteenth century's leading black abolitionists and orators. In this first biography of Purvis, Margaret Hope Bacon uses his eloquent and often fierce speeches to provide a glimpse into the life of a passionate and distinguished man, intimately involved with a wide range of major reform movements, including abolition, civil rights, Underground Railroad activism, women's rights, Irish Home Rule, Native American rights, and prison reform. Citing his role in developing the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee, an all black organization that helped escaped slaves secure passage to the North, the New York Times described Purvis at the time of his death as the president of the Underground Railroad. Voicing his opposition to a decision by the state of Pennsylvania to disenfranchise black voters in 1838, Purvis declared "there is but one race, the human race." But One Race is the dramatic story of one of the most important figures of his time.

White Freedom

White Freedom
Author: Tyler Stovall
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2021-01-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691205361

The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Tyler Stovall explores the intertwined histories of racism and freedom in France and the United States, the two leading nations that have claimed liberty as the heart of their national identities. He explores how French and American thinkers defined freedom in racial terms and conceived of liberty as an aspect and privilege of whiteness. He discusses how the Statue of Liberty—a gift from France to the United States and perhaps the most famous symbol of freedom on Earth—promised both freedom and whiteness to European immigrants. Taking readers from the Age of Revolution to today, Stovall challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, demonstrating how white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty. Throughout the history of modern Western liberal democracy, freedom has long been white freedom. A major work of scholarship that is certain to draw a wide readership and transform contemporary debates, White Freedom provides vital new perspectives on the inherent racism behind our most cherished beliefs about freedom, liberty, and human rights.

1863

1863
Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2013-02-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0809332477

Only hours into the new year of 1863, Abraham Lincoln performed perhaps his most famous action as president by signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Rather than remaining the highlight of the coming months, however, this monumental act marked only the beginning of the most pivotal year of Lincoln’s presidency and the most revolutionary twelve months of the entire Civil War. In recognition of the sesquicentennial of this tumultuous time, prominent Civil War scholars explore the events and personalities that dominated 1863 in this enlightening volume, providing a unique historical perspective on a critical period in American history. Several defining moments of Lincoln’s presidency took place in 1863, including the most titanic battle ever to shake the American continent, which soon inspired the most famous presidential speech in American history. The ten essays in this book explore the year’s important events and developments, including the response to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation; the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and other less-well-known confrontations; the New York City draft riots; several constitutional issues involving the war powers of President Lincoln; and the Gettysburg Address and its continued impact on American thought. Other topics include the adaptation of photography for war coverage; the critical use of images; the military role of the navy; and Lincoln’s family life during this fiery trial. With an informative introduction by noted Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer and a chronology that places the high-profile events of 1863 in context with cultural and domestic policy advances of the day, this remarkable compendium opens a window into a year that proved decisive not only for the Civil War and Lincoln’s presidency but also for the entire course of American history.

Justice for the Past

Justice for the Past
Author: Stephen Kershnar
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791485153

Among the most controversial issues in the United States is the question of whether public or private agencies should adopt preferential treatment programs or be required to pay reparations for slavery. Using a carefully reasoned philosophical approach, Stephen Kershnar argues that programs such as affirmative action and calls for slavery reparations are unjust for three reasons. First, the state has a duty to direct resources to those persons who, through their abilities, will benefit most from them. Second, he argues that, in the case of slavery, past injustice—where both the victims and perpetrators are long dead—cannot ground current claims to compensation. As terrible as slavery was, those who claim a right to compensation today owe their existence to it, he reasons, and since the events that bring about a person's existence are normally thought to be beneficial, past injustices do not warrant compensation. Finally, even if past injustices were allowed to serve as the basis of compensation in the present, other variables prevent a reasonable estimation of the amount owed.