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Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > African American History > Item 64
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Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey
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by Mary L. Dudziak
Sales Rank: 214431
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List Price: $24.95
$16.47
At Amazon
on 9-12-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 272 pages
Published by: Oxford University Press, USA July 2, 2008
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0195329015
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195329018
Book Dimensions:
9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Review
"Effectively sketches those events in the civil rights movement Dudziak's clarity and careful documentation make her book accessible to the general reader and a valuable tool for African and African-American studies."--Publishers Weekly
"Dudziak brings out with impressive clarity how Thurgood Marshall's greatness stemmed from his Whitman-esque ability to contain multitudes: committed to the rule of law, he could chide Kenya's new leadership for departing even slightly from it, work for justice in segregated America, and sustain a relationship with young civil rights activists taking direct and 'illegal' action in the early 1960s."--Mark Tushnet, Harvard Law School and author of Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1956-1961
"This book on a less-studied part of Marshall's career is recommended for libraries collecting in law, legal processes, and African and African American history."--Library Journal
"In this gem of a book, Mary Dudziak brings vividly to life the important but little known history of Thurgood Marshall's intense involvement with Kenya during its journey toward independence in the 1960s. This great champion of the American civil rights struggle never relinquished his hope that democracy and equality would one day flourish in Kenya, even as he became painfully aware of the obstacles that stood in the path of this dream. A powerful and poignant story, gorgeously told."--Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University and author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century
"By dint of creative and exhaustive research, Mary Dudziak has written an great book about a facet of Thurgood Marshall's career that has never before received substantial attention. Who knew that 'Mr. Civil Rights' contributed significantly to African as well as American legal systems. All students of this great man's life owe a major debt to Professor Dudziak's labors."--Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School and author of Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal
Product Description
Thurgood Marshall became a living icon of civil rights when he argued Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1954. Six years later, he was at a crossroads. A rising generation of activists were making sit-ins and demonstrations rather than lawsuits the hallmark of the civil rights movement. What role, he wondered, could he now play? When in 1960 Kenyan independence leaders asked him to help write their constitution, Marshall threw himself into their cause. Here was a new arena in which law might serve as the tool with which to forge a just society.
In Exporting American Dreams , Mary Dudziak recounts with poignancy and power the untold story of Marshall's journey to Africa. African Americans were enslaved when the U.S. constitution was written. In Kenya, Marshall could become something that had not existed in his own country: a black man helping to found a nation. He became friends with Kenyan leaders Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta, serving as advisor to the Kenyans, who needed to demonstrate to Great Britain and to the world that they would treat minority races (whites and Asians) fairly once Africans took power. He crafted a bill of rights, aiding constitutional negotiations that helped enable peaceful regime change, rather than violent resistance.
Marshall's involvement with Kenya's foundation affirmed his faith in law, while also forcing him to understand how the struggle for justice could be compromised by the imperatives of sovereignty. Marshall's beliefs were most sorely tested later in the decade when he became a Supreme Court Justice, even as American cities erupted in flames and civil rights progress stalled. Kenya's first attempt at democracy faltered, but Marshall's African journey remained a cherished memory of a time and a place when all things seemed possible.
Reader Reviews
Long before Senator Barack Obama was heralded as a man whose balance between African and American worlds would lead to substantive international change, Justice Thurgood Marshall was crafting a legacy of statesmanship, exacting jurisprudence, and diplomacy that matches the great works of any statesman and the human rights legacy of Martin Luther King. As this deeply researched, clearly phrased, and elegantly written book makes known, Justice Marshall's intervention into Kenyan nation-building was always based on a hope that the law and governmental support could provide a system durable enough for both liberty, equality, and efficient organization of people with sometimes divergent views. What I admire most about Justice Marshall is that his work speaks for itself and, despite his human rights advocacy, he never politicized his arguments. They were based on the best kind of legal reasoning possible. This book made me aware of how much the work of the founders of Kenyan and the architects who transformed South Africa from the worse kind of white supremacist state into a flawed state that still reversed bigoted ills through the Truth Commission--this book made me aware that this kind of judicial conflict resolution and nation-building is not often continued in international relations.
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Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey
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Price: $16.47
Updated on 9-12-2008.
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