Civil Rights
The legacy of racial discrimination in America did not end with the Civil War but is an ongoing issue. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s reflects an important period of resistance, activism, and legislation related to the ongoing struggle to end race-based discrimination and to gain equal rights under the law of the United States.
Special Collections holds many 19th-century titles related to civil rights in the Lincoln Collection. Twentieth-century sources include books related to Delaware's role in the Supreme Court-ordered desegregation of schools, civil rights leaders in the state, and issues of civil unrest in the late 1960s.
Selected sources are listed here and additional resources may be found by subject searching in DELCAT.
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The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction
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Call Number: E449 .M176 1964Publication Date: 1964First edition. Lincoln Collection. -
Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era
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Call Number: E 457.2 .B38 1998ISBN: 9780823217687Publication Date: 1998Lincoln Collection. Bookplate of Herman Belz, with his autograph, on the front free endpaper. -
Manhood the basis of suffrage: Speech of Hon. Michael Hahn, of Louisiana, delivered before the National Equal Suffrage Association of Washington, on Friday evening, November 17, 1865
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Call Number: JK 2318 .I3 1858Publication Date: 1865Lincoln Collection.
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An address to the democracy of Delaware : to the enemy's [sic] of negro equality in Delaware
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Call Number: JK 2318 .D4 1872Publication Date: 1872Delaware Collection.
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The challenge of Louis Redding's Civil Rights legacy
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Call Number: FOLIO E 185.61 .W37x 2000Publication Date: 2000Delaware Collection. Inaugural address as the first Louis L. Redding Professor for the Study of Law and Public Policy, School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.
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Brown v. Board of Education: caste, culture, and the constitution
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Call Number: KF 4155 .B758 2003ISBN: 0700612882Publication Date: 2003Delaware Collection. Leland Ware presentation copy, inscribed for "Lit" [Littleton Mitchell]. Before 1954, both law and custom mandated strict racial segregation throughout much of the nation. That began to change with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned the pernicious "separate but equal" doctrine.This new study of "Brown"--the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia--examines the fight for legal equality in its broad cultural and historical context. -
Integrating Delaware
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Call Number: F 174.W79 N4 2003ISBN: 0874137845Publication Date: 2003Delaware Collection. The story of Delaware's most nationally influential African-American family also reflects the story of the American black middle class in the 20th century. Patriarch Lewis Redding arrived in Wilmington in 1900. His four children -- a lawyer, an author, and two schoolteachers -- dedicated their lives to battling the laws, customs, and ignorance of racism. The Reddings took the lead in integrating Delaware, and played a hand on the national stage, as well. -
A proud moment for Delaware: Louis L. Redding, Esq. and the Hon. Collins J. Seitz, and their contribution to the Brown v. Board of Education decision
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Call Number: KFD 392.2.Z9 P76x 2004Publication Date: 2004Delaware Collection.
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Between North and South: Delaware, desegregation and the myth of American sectionalism
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Call Number: LC 2802.D3 G34 2013ISBN: 9780812244434Publication Date: 2013First edition. Delaware Collection. The three-decade-long struggle over segregated schooling in Delaware traces the origins of a long litigation campaign by NAACP attorneys who translated popular complaints about the inequities in Jim Crow schooling into challenges to racial proscriptions in public education. Their legal victories subsequently provided the evidentiary basis for the Supreme Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, marking Delaware as a center of civil rights advancements. -
Wilmington 1968: sourcebook
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Call Number: E 185.93.D4 W55 2018Publication Date: 2018Delaware Collection. Fiftieth anniversary project commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and subsequent response to his murder. When Wilmington residents' public actions were deemed threats to public safety, the National Guard was activated for a nine-month occupation.
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Delaware : the politics of urban unrest, July 1967 - January 1969
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Call Number: E 185.93.D4 S36x 1971Publication Date: 1971Delaware Collection. Author's autograph presentation copy, inscribed to Governor [Russell] Peterson, dated 4/73. This study reviews civil unrest in Wilmington prior to and after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which led to Delaware National Guard occupation of the city.
