...In 1967 the president, Lyndon Johnson, nominated United States Court of Appeals Judge, Thurgood Marshall to join the Supreme Court. In August of the same year he was confirmed. This made him the first Black American to ever take occupation in the highest American courts. Thurgood was one of the most effective civil rights activist in history, and he was a firm believer in the constitution. He strongly believed the constitution was the source to get Black Americans the equality they were striving for. He was dedicated to being a voice for his people, and he knew what was politically correct when coming from both sides of a good argument. Some say it wasn’t in the best interest of the country to let a black man on the supreme court at the time, but President Johnson’s response was simply, “I believe it’s the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man, and the right place.”1 Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. His father, William Marshall, the grandson of a slave, worked as a steward at an exclusive club. His mother, Norma, was a kindergarten teacher.2 One of William Marshall's favorite pastimes was to listen to cases at the local courthouse before returning home to rehash the lawyers' arguments with his sons. Thurgood Marshall later recalled, "Now you want to know how I got involved in law? I don't know. The nearest I can get is that my dad, my brother, and I had the most violent arguments you ever heard about anything. I guess we...
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...OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY OUTLINE OF OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY C O N T E N T S CHAPTER 1 Early America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 CHAPTER 2 The Colonial Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 CHAPTER 3 The Road to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 CHAPTER 4 The Formation of a National Government . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 CHAPTER 5 Westward Expansion and Regional Differences . . . . . . . 110 CHAPTER 6 Sectional Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 CHAPTER 7 The Civil War and Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 CHAPTER 8 Growth and Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 CHAPTER 9 Discontent and Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 CHAPTER 10 War, Prosperity, and Depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 CHAPTER 11 The New Deal and World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 CHAPTER 12 Postwar America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 CHAPTER 13 Decades of Change: 1960-1980 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 CHAPTER 14 The New Conservatism and a New World Order . . . . . . 304 CHAPTER 15 Bridge to the 21st Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 PICTURE PROFILES Becoming a Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....
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...Barack Obama Dreams from My Father “For we are strangers before them, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. 1 CHRONICLES 29:15 PREFACE TO THE 2004 EDITION A LMOST A DECADE HAS passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went to work with the belief that the story of my family, and my efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience, as well as the fluid state of identitythe leaps through time, the collision of cultures-that mark our modern life. Like most first-time authors, I was filled with hope and despair upon the book’s publication-hope that the book might succeed beyond my youthful dreams, despair that I had failed to say anything worth saying. The reality fell somewhere in between. The reviews were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact. I had little time for reflection over the next ten years. I ran a voter registration project in...
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