NCW Libraries

"This picture book biography in verse tells the story of Mary Hamilton, an African American woman and Civil Rights activist, who was found to be in contempt of court when she would not respond to questions from an Alabama judge who used only her first name, while calling white people "Mr.," "Mrs.," or "Miss." The NAACP took her case, which appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in Mary Hamilton's favor." --

"Beginning in 1876, the Court systematically dismantled both the equal protection guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, at least for African-Americans, and what seemed to be the guarantee of the right to vote in the Fifteenth. And so, of the more than 500,000 African-Americans who had registered to vote across the South, the vast majority former slaves, by 1906, less than ten percent remained. Many of those were terrified to go the polls, lest they...

"Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and Black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses. They faced formidable opposition, most notoriously from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott. Still, Martha S. Jones explains, no single case defined their status....

"On December 7, 1941 -- "a date which will live in infamy" -- the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War. Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000...

"Reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty ... [and] how the Supreme Court enabled racist policing and sanctioned law enforcement excesses. The fact that police are nine times more likely to kill Black men than other Americans is no accident; it is the result of an elaborate body of doctrines that allow the police and courts to presume that suspects are...