Missouri Law and the American Conscience PDF Download

Author: Kenneth H. Winn
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826273564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.

Author: Walter A. Jackson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146962060X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America's most explosive public issues.

Author: Nicole Evelina
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493067761
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
After being forgotten for nearly 130 years, the “Mother of Suffrage in Missouri” and her husband are finally taking their rightful place in history. St. Louisans Virginia and Francis Minor forever changed the direction of women’s rights by taking the issue to the Supreme Court for the first and only time in 1875, a feat never eclipsed even by their better-known peers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Yet despite a myriad of accomplishments and gaining notoriety in their own time, the Minors’ names have largely faded from memory. In 1867, Virginia founded the nation’s first organization solely dedicated to women’s suffrage—two years before Anthony formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). Virginia and Francis were also the brains behind the groundbreaking idea that women were given the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, a philosophy the NWSA adopted for nearly a decade. And their story doesn’t end there. After the court case, Francis went on to become a prolific writer on women’s rights and one of the first and strongest male allies of the suffrage movement. Virginia instigated tax revolts across the country and campaigned side-by-side with Anthony for women’s rights in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. America’s Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor is the first biography of these suffrage celebrities who were unique for their time in being jointly dedicated to the cause of female enfranchisement. This book follows their lives from slave-holding Virginians through their highly-lauded civilian work during the Civil War, and into the height of the early suffrage movement to show how two ordinary people of like mind, dedicated to a cause, can change the course of history.

Author: Bonnie Stepenoff
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264557
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Thad Snow (1881-1955) was an eccentric farmer and writer who was best known for his involvement in Missouri's 1939 Sharecropper Protest--a mass highway demonstration in which approximately eleven hundred demonstrators marched to two federal highways to illustrate the plight of the cotton laborers. Snow struggled to make sense of the changing world, and his answers to questions regarding race, social justice, the environment, and international war placed him at odds with many. In Thad Snow, Bonnie Stepenoff explores the world of Snow, providing a full portrait of him. Snow settled in the Missouri Bootheel in 1910--"Swampeast Missouri," as he called it--when it was still largely an undeveloped region of hardwood and cypress swamps. He cleared and drained a thousand acres and became a prominent landowner, highway booster, and promoter of economic development--though he later questioned the wisdom of developing wild land. In the early 1920s, "cotton fever" came to the region, and Snow started producing cotton in the rich southeast Missouri soil. Although he employed sharecroppers, he became a bitter critic of the system that exploited labor and fostered racism. In the 1930s, when a massive flood and the Great Depression heaped misery on the farmworkers, he rallied to their cause. Defying the conventions of his class, he invited the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) to organize workers on his land. He became a friend and colleague of Owen Whitfield, an African American minister, who led the Sharecroppers' Roadside Strike of 1939. The successes of this great demonstration convinced Snow that mankind could fight injustice by peaceful means. While America mobilized for World War II, he denounced all war as evil, remaining a committed pacifist until his death in 1955. Shortly before he died, Snow published an autobiographical memoir, From Missouri, in which he affirmed his optimistic belief that people could peacefully change the world. This biography places Snow in the context of his place and time, revealing a unique individual who agonized over racial and economic oppression and environmental degradation. Snow lived, worked, and pondered the connections among these issues in a small rural corner of Missouri, but he thought in global terms. Well-crafted and highly readable, Thad Snow provides an astounding assessment of an agricultural entrepreneur transformed into a social critic and an activist.

Author: William E. Parrish
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119165857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Comprehensively captures the robust history of the state of Missouri, from the pre-Columbian period to the present Combining a chronological overview with topical development, this book by a team of esteemed historians presents the rich and varied history of Missouri, a state that has played a pivotal role in the history of the nation. In a clear, engaging style that all students of Missouri history are certain to enjoy, the authors of Missouri: The Heart of the Nation explore such topics as Missouri’s indigenous population, French and Spanish colonialism, territorial growth, statehood, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, railroads, modernization, two world wars, constitutional change, Civil Rights, political realignments, and the difficult choices that Missourians face in the 21st century. Featuring chapter revisions as well as new maps, photographs, reading lists, a preface, and index, this latest edition of this beloved survey textbook will continue to engage all those celebrating Missouri’s bicentennial. A companion website features a student study guide. Published to commemorate the bicentennial of Missouri statehood in 2021 Features fully updated chapters that bring the historical narrative up to the present Presents numerous images and maps that enrich the coverage of key events Provides suggestions for further reading Missouri: The Heart of the Nation is an excellent book for colleges and universities offering survey courses on state history or state government. It also will appeal to all lovers of American history and to those who call Missouri home.

Author: Timothy Sandefur
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1939709040
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty documents a forgotten truth: the word “democracy” is nowhere to be found in either the Constitution or the Declaration. But it is the overemphasis of democracy by the legal community–rather than the primacy of liberty, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence–that has led to the growth of government power at the expense of individual rights. Now, more than ever, Sandefur explains, the Declaration of Independence should set the framework for interpreting our fundamental law. In the very first sentence of the Constitution, the founding fathers stated unambiguously that “liberty” is a blessing. Today, more and more Americans are realizing that their individual freedoms are being threatened by the ever-expanding scope of the government. Americans have always differed over important political issues, but some things should not be settled by majority vote. In The Conscience of the Constitution, Timothy Sandefur presents a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law.

Author: Bonnie Stepenoff
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826265650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A small French settlement thrived for half a century on the west bank of the Mississippi River before the Louisiana Purchase made it part of the United States in 1803. But for the citizens of Ste. Genevieve, becoming Americans involved more than simply acknowledging a transfer of power. Bonnie Stepenoff has written an engaging history of Missouri’s oldest permanent settlement to explore what it meant to be Americanized in our country’s early years. Picking up where other studies of Ste. Genevieve leave off, she traces the dramatic changes wrought by the transfer of sovereignty to show the process of social and economic transformation on a young nation’s new frontier. Stepenoff tells how French and Spanish residents—later joined by German immigrants and American settlers—made necessary compromises to achieve order and community, forging a democracy that represented different approaches to such matters as education, religion, property laws, and women’s rights. By examining the town’s historical circumstances, its legal institutions, and especially its popular customs, she shows how Ste. Genevieve differed from other towns along the Mississippi. Stepenoff has plumbed the town’s voluminous archives to share previously untold stories of Ste. Genevieve citizens that reflect how Americanization affected their lives. In these pages we meet a free woman of color who sued a prominent white family for support of her children; a slave who obtained her own freedom and then purchased her daughters’ freedom; a local sheriff who joined Aaron Burr’s conspiracy; and a doctor who treated cholera victims and later became a U.S. senator. More than colorful characters, these are real people shown pursuing justice and liberty under a new flag. The story of Ste. Genevieve serves as a testament to Tocqueville’s observations on American democracy while also challenging some of the commonly held beliefs about that institution. From French Community to Missouri Town provides a better understanding not only of how democracy works but also of what it meant to become American when America was still young.

Author: Eric M. Freedman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479870978
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Eric M. Freedman "Making Habeas Work: A Legal History" explores habeas corpus, a judicial order that requires a person under arrest to be brought before an independent judge or into court. In his book, Freedman critically discusses habeas corpus as a common law writ, as a legal remedy and as an instrument of checks and balances.

Author: Gary R. Kremer
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826274668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Conceived of as a way to commemorate Missouri’s bicentennial of statehood, this unique work presents the perspective of Gary Kremer, one of the Show-Me State’s foremost historians, as he ponders why history played out as it did over the course of the two centuries since Missouri’s admittance to the Union. In the writing of what is much more than a survey history, Kremer, himself a fifth-generation Missourian, infuses the narrative with his vast knowledge and personal experiences, even as he considers what being a Missourian has meant—across the many years and to this day—to all of the state’s people, and how the forces of history—time, place, race, gender, religion, and class—shaped people and determined their opportunities and choices, in turn creating collective experiences that draw upon the past in an attempt to make sense of the present and plan for the future. Key elements of the book include the centrality of race to the Missouri experience—from the time Missourians began to seek statehood in 1817 all the way up to the Black Lives Matter movement of the 21st century—as well as ongoing tensions created by the urban-rural divide and struggle to define the proper role of government in society.

Author: Dennis W. Belcher
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786486228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The 11th Missouri Infantry distinguished itself as just the type of regiment the Union needed in the Civil War. Hard as nails and loyal to a fault, the men of the "Eagle Brigade" would follow their commanders "into hell if they ordered." They battled two Confederate regiments at Iuka, turned the tide at Battery Robinett at Corinth, assaulted the impossible Stockade Redan at Vicksburg as whole ranks of soldiers were cut down, and broke Hood's line at Nashville. Although the 11th Missouri ranks among the 300 top regiments of the Civil War, little of its history has been formally recorded. This study provides a detailed account of the regiment's four-and-a-half years of outstanding service and a roster.