African American History

By Mark.V.Tushnet (Editor), Randall Kennedy (Foreword) Much has been written about Thurgood Marshall, but this is the first book to collect his own words. Here are briefs he filed as...

By Howard L. Bingham and Max Wallace In 1966 Muhammad Ali announced his intention to refuse induction into the United States Army as a conscientious objector. This set off a...

Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring, and traces their influential roles in changing the course...

  By Mark V. Tushnet *Signed Bookplate From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery...

By Jose Anderson (Author) Dr. Charles Hamilton Houston was an outstanding Harvard-trained Supreme Court lawyer for the NAACP. As Dean of Howard University Law School, he mentored future Supreme Court...

The first comprehensive historical treatment of resignations, retirements and and deaths explaining when and why justices have stepped down.

By John Charles Thomas (Author), W. Taylor Reveley III (Foreword) This inspiring memoir begins in 1983, on the day John Charles Thomas was sworn in as the first Black―and, at...

By Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips In this profound and fascinating book, the authors revisit an overlooked Supreme Court decision that changed forever how justice is carried out in the...

By Lea VanderVelde Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the...

By Christopher James Bonner (Author) Citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States was an ever-moving target. The Constitution did not specify its exact meaning, leaving lawmakers and other Americans to struggle...

Hardcover By David N. Gellman In Liberty's Chain, David N. Gellman shows how the Jay family, abolitionists and slaveholders alike, embodied the contradictions of the revolutionary age.  The Jays of New...

By David W. Levy (Author) For nearly sixty years, the University of Oklahoma, in obedience to state law, denied admission to African Americans. Only in October 1948 did this racial...