• Perhaps readings lots of historical non-fiction is getting you down. Here is a short essay that helps you strategize about reading. Worth the time.

Course Materials

• Alan Brinkley, “Allard Lowenstein and the Ordeal of Liberalism,” in Liberalism and its Discontents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998): 237-48.
• Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998): 154-200.
• Lizabeth Cohen, “From Town Square to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America,” American Historical Review 101 (Oct. 1996): 1050-1081.
• Karen Brodkin Sacks, “How Did Jews Become White Folks?” in Race, eds. Steven Gregory & Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994): 78-102.
• Thomas Sugrue, “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights and the Reaction Against Liberalism in the Urban North," Journal of American History 82(2) (1995): 551-78.
• Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm
• Martha Davis, Brutal Need
• Robert Lefcourt, “Law Against the People,” in Law Against the People: Essays to Demystify Law, Order, and the Courts, ed. Robert Lefcourt (New York: Random House, 1971): 21-37.
• Ann M. Garfinkle et al., “Women’s Servitude Under Law,” in Law Against the People, 103-122.
• Stanley Crouch, “When Watts Burned,” in Voices in Our Blood, ed. Jon Meacham (New York: Random House, 2001): 346-348.
• Elizabeth Hardwick, “After Watts,” in Voices in Our Blood: 348-352.
• Bruce Shulman, "This ain't no foolin' around"
• Little Rock Papers: The Eisenhower Presidential Library has placed a number of documents from the Little Rock school crisis (1957-58) up on its website. Click on this link, then click on individual links to download the documents (.pdf format). For a single .pdf of the document packet, click here.

  Little Rock Class Assignment (10/3)

  Additional documents for the Little Rock unit are here:

  • Exerpts from EOTP readings

  •Transcript of oral argument in Cooper v. Aaron

  • Per curiam opinion in Cooper v. Aaron

  • Frankfurter concurring opinion in Cooper v. Aaron

Professor Thomas Hilbink • Department of Legal Studies • 110 Gordon Hall • 418 N. Pleasant Street
413-545-2003 • hilbink@legal.umass.edu
office hours: Wednesdays 3 to 5 p.m. and by appointment
Teaching Assistant: Amanda Geno • ageno@history.umass.edu • office hours: Thursdays 1 to 3 p.m. (or by appt.)