Timothy Nels Thurber's Books

The Politics of Equality

Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle

By: Timothy Nels Thurber

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The Politics of Equality

Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle

By: Timothy Nels Thurber

Timothy N. Thurber explores the links between Senator Hubert Humphrey's policies on racial justice and economic reform. Thurber investigates Humphrey's legislative agenda in the context of the tensions between the class-based politics of the New Deal to which Humphrey wished the party to return and the rights-based politics that eventually came to dominate the Democratic platform. Although Humphrey is often associated with the civil rights movement, Thurber shows that he stood out in his commitment to achieving racial equality through means of economic reform, an approach that was not readily embraced by the Democratic Party.Thurber begins by tracing Humphrey's early life, and goes on to detail the rise of his political career, his lifelong commitment to the New Deal goal of economic equality, and his legislative agenda as a senator. From the Fair Employment Practices law, to the triumphant passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to more radical recommendations--such as a Domestic Marshall Plan--Humphrey became concerned with how structural changes in the economy effected African Americans.Thurber uses Humphrey's career not only to explore the intersection of race, class, and politics in the second half of this century but also to reveal the trajectory of Democratic politics in the postwar era as the party faced the increasingly difficult task of maintaining the New Deal coalition. Hubert Humphrey's agenda of racial justice through economic reform-its triumphs and its failures-represents for Thurber the precarious position of liberalism and a road still not taken.

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Page Count

380

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231110472

ISBN 13

9780231110471

Kennedy vs. Carter

The 1980 Battle for the Democratic Party's Soul

By: Timothy Stanley

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Kennedy vs. Carter

The 1980 Battle for the Democratic Party's Soul

By: Timothy Stanley

The late Edward Kennedy's liberal credentials were unimpeachable, and perhaps never as much on display as when he challenged incumbent Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Most accounts of modern U.S. politics view Ronald Reagan's landslide election in 1980 as a conservative realignment of the American public—and Kennedy's defeat in the Democratic primaries as the last hurrah of New Deal liberalism. Now an astute observer of the American scene reexamines those primary battles to contend that Kennedy's insurgent campaign was more popular than historians have presumed and was defeated only by historical accident and not by its perceived radicalism. Timothy Stanley takes a new look at how Jimmy Carter alienated his own supporters, why Ted Kennedy ran against him, what the Kennedy campaign has to say about America in the 1970s, and whether or not the 1980 election really was a turning point in electoral history. He tells the story of a struggle for the soul for a party bitterly divided over how to respond to economic decline, cultural upheaval, and humiliation overseas. And in the telling, he offers both a comprehensive narrative of the primaries and a joint biography of the two men who struggled for their party's leadership. Stanley's comprehensive research draws on more than a dozen archives as well as interviews with nearly thirty key historical players-including George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Mike Dukakis—and also makes creative use of polling data to recreate the ebb and flow of the election season. What emerges is not only the story of a campaign but also a revisionist history of a misunderstood decade—one most often defined by religious reawakening, chronic inflation, and the tax revolt that revived Republican fortunes. Yet Kennedy's crusade to rebuild the ailing New Deal coalition of ethnic minorities, blue-collar conservatives, and firebrand liberals was popular enough to suggest that Americans were neither liberal nor conservative but, instead, anxious, angry, and desperate for leadership from any direction. Kennedy vs. Carter provides a unique analysis of how support shifted from Carter to Reagan right up to election day, with Reagan elected largely because he was not the unpopular incumbent. By showing how Kennedy was a far more popular politician than orthodox historiography has suggested, Stanley argues for a more nuanced understanding of what really determines political outcomes and a greater appreciation for the enduring popularity of American liberalism.

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Page Count

312

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700617027

ISBN 13

9780700617029

Republicans and Race

The GOP's Frayed Relationship with African Americans, 1945–1974

By: Timothy N. Thurber

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Republicans and Race

The GOP's Frayed Relationship with African Americans, 1945–1974

By: Timothy N. Thurber

Skeptics might rationalize that Mitt Romney received a scant 6 percent of the black vote in 2012 only because African Americans would naturally favor one of their own. But since 1964, no Republican presidential candidate has attracted more than 15 percent of the black electorate, and few GOP candidates for other offices have fared much better. No segment of the American electorate is more reliably Democratic than African Americans. The GOP, meanwhile, remains nearly an all-white party. In this path-breaking book, historian Timothy Thurber illuminates the deep roots of this gulf by exploring the contentious, and sometimes surprising, relationship between African Americans and the Republican Party from the end of World War II through Richard Nixon’s presidency. The GOP, he shows, shaped the modern civil rights movement, but the struggle for racial equality also transformed the GOP. Thurber challenges conventional wisdom that the “party of Lincoln” disappeared in the mid-1960s. Prior to 1964, the GOP was indifferent or hostile to many of the demands from civil rights activists. During the height of the civil rights revolution, Republicans were essential to enacting federal policies that made American society more egalitarian. The GOP helped defend, and sometimes expanded, those reforms in the early 1970s. Conservatives were not as dominant after 1964 as scholars and pundits often portray. Yet throughout these three decades the rift between African Americans and the GOP remained substantial. They disagreed, often sharply, over the role of the federal government, particularly regarding economic matters and the integration of schools and neighborhoods. They had different views about race and American society. They also clashed in the political arena, where Republicans wrote off the black vote as unwinnable, irrelevant, or counterproductive to their drive to supplant the Democrats as the nation’s majority party. The GOP preferred to court whites nationwide, sometimes by appealing to their racial animosities. That strategy often yielded electoral success, but the legacy of the past looms large in the early twenty-first century. With its depth of research and insight, Republicans and Race will stand as a definitive study as the GOP ponders the composition of its base in future elections.

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Page Count

512

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

070063522X

ISBN 13

9780700635221

The Politics of Equality

Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle

By: Timothy Nels Thurber

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The Politics of Equality

Hubert H. Humphrey and the African American Freedom Struggle

By: Timothy Nels Thurber

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

380

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231110472

ISBN 13

9780231110471

Book's by Timothy Nels Thurber

The Politics of Equality

The Politics of Equality

Kennedy vs. Carter

Kennedy vs. Carter

Republicans and Race

Republicans and Race

The Politics of Equality

The Politics of Equality

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