The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 

About: The Arkansas Historical Quarterly is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & Population. It has an ISSN identifier of 0004-1823. Over the lifetime, 1044 publications have been published receiving 6610 citations. The journal is also known as: Arkansas Historical Quarterly.

Racism: A Short History

Abstract: Racism: A Short History By George M Fredrickson (Princeton: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002) Pp ix, 216 Acknowledgments, introduction, epilogue, appendix, notes, index $2295) Historian George M Fredrickson, an eminent authority on race and ethnicity, has produced a highly readable, sharply analytical, and consistently provocative overview of the course of Western racism from the Middle Ages to the present He focuses on the evolution of the two most virulent forms of racism, anti-Semitism and color-coded white supremacy, that came to fullest fruition in the "overtly racist regimes" that emerged in the American South, Nazi Germany, and South Africa Fredrickson compares and contrasts these regimes and probes the connections between them with consummate skill He also maintains that racism, always nationally specific, invariably became involved in searches for national identity and cohesion and varied with the historical experience of each country Despite such variations, all three overtly racist regimes possessed common features, including the implementation of an official racist ideology that severely proscribed the rights, privileges, and opportunities of blacks and/ or Jews This volume traces the origins of Western racism to medieval Europe, during an era of intense religiosity in which the increasing hostility of Christians toward Jews transformed the anti-Judaism endemic to Christianity into an anti-Semitism that made getting rid of Jews preferable to converting them Anti-Semitism, in turn, became racism when Jews came to be considered innately malevolent beings in league with the devil rather than merely guilty of harboring false beliefs Of particular importance in this development was Spain, where attitudes and practices toward Muslims and Jews "served as a kind of segue between the religious intolerance of the Middle Ages and the naturalistic racism of the modern era" (p 40) Although Fredrickson recognizes that Europeans had long associated the color black with evil, he nonetheless questions whether Europeans in general were strongly prejudiced against Africans prior to the beginning of the slave trade Initially, he points out, religion rather than race justified the European enslavement of Africans: "The only way to save African souls was to enslave them" (p 38) The dark skins of West Africans soon became a part of the equation, and the so-called Curse of Ham or Canaan was invoked to demonstrate that African slavery was divinely inspired However, anti-black racism took root slowly because it ran counter to the Christian belief that the entire human race was of "one blood" and worthy of salvation Only when emancipated from Christian universalism did colorcoded racism become an ideology The volume explores the route by which this emancipation took place, beginning in the eighteenth century with the invention of the concept of races as basic human types classified by skin color and other physical characteristics The scientific racism that ultimately emerged was used to determine those groups, notably Jews and blacks, who were unfit to possess the rights of full citizenship "Scientific" pronouncements regarding the innate inferiority of blacks lent legitimacy to popular views long held in the United States, especially in the South …

State of the Union: A Century of American Labor

Abstract: State of the Union: A Century of American Labor. By Nelson Lichtenstein. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. ix, 337. Preface, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, index. $29.95.) Nelson Lichtenstein's latest book is both a history of the American labor movement over the past seventy years and a plea for its revival. Lichtenstein, who teaches in the history department at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is probably the leading New Left historian studying American labor since the 1930s. State of the Union is a work of synthesis that is most interesting for what it says about how New Left scholarship on American labor has evolved over the past three decades. Lichtenstein makes clear in his book's introduction that, rather than a history of American workers in general, he has written a study of labor unions and their relationship to what reformers used to call "the labor question." State of the Union s first two chapters trace the upsurge in American unions during the Great Depression and World War II. Lichtenstein explains very clearly the various rationales New Dealers developed to support the expansion of trade unionism, such as the need to increase consumer purchasing power, promote employment (and thus economic) security, and provide a measure of democracy in the modern workplace. This was the logic behind the creation of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, which gave American unions strong legal protections for the first time. Unlike other New Left scholars, such as Thomas Ferguson and Colin Gordon, Lichtenstein gives most of the credit for the Wagner Act's passage to New Deal liberals and more radical leftists, not enlightened employers and financiers. Lichtenstein is quick to point out that worker militancy, not new laws, were the most important reason why unions grew during the mid-1930s. His account differs somewhat from older ones by emphasizing that the split between the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) grew out of differing attitudes toward the "new immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe, and not just the question of craft versus industrial organization. The CIO's leaders and organizers were more open to recruiting members from recently arrived immigrant groups, Lichtenstein argues, than the trade unionists of northern European ancestry who dominated the AFL. Lichtenstein's account of labor's rise also differs from New Left orthodoxy by recognizing the important contributions made by Democratic governors in major industrial states and the Roosevelt administration. …

A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

Abstract: A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow. By David L. Chappell. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. 344. Introduction, illustrations, conclusion, appendix, notes, sources, bibliographic essay, acknowledgments, index. $34.95.) In A Stone of Hope, David L. Chappell argues that religion provided many participants in the civil rights movement with the inspiration and hope necessary to initiate and sustain the struggle despite seemingly overpowering odds. Although southern whites overwhelmingly favored segregation, they divided over how best to preserve it and lacked the overriding commitment to the cause that civil rights activists showed to theirs. Many civil rights participants believed that God was working through the movement, and so, for them, religion legitimized the struggle. However, their white opponents found no religious support for Jim Crow from the leaders of the major white denominations, little from their clergymen, and only a small amount from a divided white laity. While religion had helped legitimize slavery and the Confederate cause among most white southerners during the Civil War, it did not provide a rationale or inspiration for preserving Jim Crow a century later, thereby substantially and even fatally weakening the segregationist cause. Based on extensive archival and manuscript research and oral history, Chappell's engagingly written study offers a provocative interpretation of the movement and its opponents. In the opening chapter, Chappell argues that northern white liberals, hamstrung by their commitment to education, persuasion, and gradualism, achieved little for African-American rights in the 1930s and 1940s. Mistakenly, such liberals expected that the South's economic and educational modernization would lead white southerners to abandon an irrational, obsolete segregationist tradition. Convinced of the power of reason and suasion, liberals lacked the zeal to inspire and lead an equal rights struggle. The alliance between northern liberals and the civil rights movement was essential to overturn legal discrimination in the South, but the movement derived its inspiration from an irrational faith that liberals lacked. Religion, Chappell argues, inspired many civil rights participants with the assurance to face violence and economic coercion, certain that God was on their side. The movement constituted a religious revival, the nation's Third Great Awakening, replete with participants' claims of miracles, conversion experiences, and God's presence. Like earlier Great Awakenings, the third changed society. Civil rights strategists and leaders lacked the liberals' faith in persuasion. Articulate civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. …