While some American civil rights activists professed belief in the “philosophy of nonviolence,” others declared nonviolent civil disobedience to be “a tactic rather than a philosophy.” Like many dichotomies, the tactic-versus-philosophy distinction combined as much as it divided. Those who viewed nonviolence as a tactic or method were treated as akin regardless of how much they differed in their tactics or methods. Similarly, those who believed in the philosophy of nonviolence were lumped together with each other and with those who saw nonviolence as a “way of life.” The history of the tactic-versus-philosophy dichotomy provides a unique window on the role of nonviolence within the American civil rights movement.

Race theorists have been unable to reach a consensus regarding the basic historical question, “is ‘race’ modern?” I argue that this is partly because the question itself is ambiguous. There is not really one question that race scholars are answering, but at least six. First, is the concept of race modern? Second, is there a modern concept of race that is distinct from earlier race concepts? Third, are “races” themselves modern? Fourth, are racialized groups modern? Fifth, are the means and methods associated with racialization modern? And sixth, are the meanings attached to racialized traits modern? Because these questions have different answers, the debate about the historical origins of “race” cannot be resolved unless they are distinguished. I will explain the ways in which “race” is and is not modern by answering these questions, thereby offering a resolution to a seemingly intractable problem.

This paper exploits the history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War to estimate the effect of politician race on public finance. While the effect of black politicians is positive and significant, black officials may be endogenous to electoral preferences for redistribution. I therefore use the number of free blacks in the antebellum era (1860) as an instrument for black political leaders during Reconstruction. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates show that an additional black official increased per capita county tax revenue by $0.20, more than an hour’s wage at the time. The effect was not persistent, however, disappearing entirely once black politicians were removed from office at Reconstruction’s end. Consistent with the stated policy objectives of black officials, I find positive effects of black politicians on land tenancy and black literacy. These results suggest that black political leaders had large effects on public finance and individual outcomes over and above electoral preferences.

This article examines the impact of African American migration into Kansas City, Missouri, on the city's segregated school system in the 1940s and early 1950s. Substantial increases in the number of African American elementary school-age children produced chronic overcrowding in the segregated black schools, which was not easily relieved due to the legal requirement to operate racially segregated schools. In order to address the crowding, the school district was compelled on four occasions in the late 1940s and early 1950s to convert an entire school from white use to African American use. In each case, the school district took the symbolic step of changing the name of the school so that it was clearly identifiable as a school for African American students. The school district's practice of renaming schools coded those schools by race and further signaled that the surrounding area had become a black neighborhood.

This article sketches the contours of a postcolonial genealogy of international organizations law. Contrary to conventional accounts, which remain strongly Eurocentric, the article claims that international organizations law did not emerge until the closing stages of the Second World War, and that its evolution was strongly influenced by the accelerating processes of decolonization that accompanied its birth. More specifically, the article argues that the emergence of international organizations law was spurred by a series of perceived problems regarding the adequacy of the international legal system in the aftermath of the end of formal colonial rule, in which the relations of power constructed through colonialism remained profoundly implicated. The politics of decolonization thus shaped the practice of international organizations, provided the catalyst for many of the foundational cases in international organizations law, and motivated much of its early doctrinal scholarship. Moreover, the article argues that the functionalist logic of international organizations law is deeply embedded in a postcolonial imaginary which, by supporting the division of the world into formally equivalent nation-states, ostensibly cuts against the hegemonic territorialism of colonial governance.

This paper examines Joseph Smith's construction of a racialized theology, which drew upon conceptions of Abrahamic lineage and the possibility of “racial redemption” for peoples of African descent through conversion to Mormonism. This ran against the grain of his Protestant and Catholic contemporaries’ religious understandings of race. He expanded upon earlier iterations of his ideas with the introduction of new rituals and liturgy related to LDS temples. Smith's wife may have invited a person of African descent to participate in this new liturgy before his murder in June 1844. The views he expressed about peoples of African descent before his death are inchoate, although high-ranking Mormons related to Smith seemed to have agreed with the possibility of racial redemption. After Smith's death, Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders framed the LDS temple and priesthood restriction in terms of Smith's liturgy rather than any of Smith's varied teachings on race. This paper also argues that Mormonism's racial restriction arose from its roots in the sealing ritual rather than ecclesiological power structures. Mormonism's racial doctrine has often been described as a “priesthood ban,” referring to ecclesiastical authority. However, this discounts the religious contexts in which it arose and excludes the experiences of women and children, who were not allowed to participate in the endowment or sealing ordinances. This paper places Mormonism's temple liturgy at the front and center of the LDS Church's priesthood and temple restriction.

Historians usually consider the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s to have been consistently opposed to labor unions and the aspirations of working-class people. The official outlook of the national Klan organization fits this characterization, but the interaction between grassroots Klan groups and pockets of white Protestant working-class Americans was more complex. Some left-wing critics of capitalism singled out the Klan as a legitimate if flawed platform on which to build white working-class unity at a time when unions were weak and other institutions demonstrated indifference to working-class interests. In industrial communities scattered across the Midwest, South, and West, white Protestant workers joined the Klan. In Akron, Ohio, the Klan helped to sustain white working-class community cohesion among alienated rubber workers. In Birmingham, Alabama, the Klan violently repressed mixed-race unions but joined with white Protestant workers in a political movement that enacted reforms beneficial to the white working class. But Klan attention to working-class interests was circumstantial and rigidly restricted by race, religion, and ethnicity. Ku Klux definitions of whiteness excluded from fellowship many immigrant and Catholic workers. Local Klans supported striking white Protestant workers when Catholic, immigrant, or black rivals were present, but acted, sometimes violently, against strikes that destabilized white Protestant communities. Ku Klux sympathies complicated urban socialist politics in the Midwest and disrupted the effectiveness and unity of the United Mine Workers. Lingering Klan sympathies among union workers document the power of reactionary popular movements to undermine working-class identity in favor of restrictive loyalties based on race, religion, and ethnicity.

The black southern press was an entity dominated by male editors and entrepreneurs. The effort to equalize teacher pay, one of the core fights for rights in the South, and the principal effort at gendered race advocacy during the World War II era, was led in large measure by black women. While both the fight for salary equalization and the survival of the black press depended upon segregation to maintain their survival, those newspapers were entities dominated by men advocating for equal salaries in a profession dominated by women, and the gendered nature of their coverage shaped knowledge of the fight within the black community.