Describes how the racist academic consensus was established at Harvard University, focusing on two professors, Samuel George Morton and Louis Agassiz, who worked to convince U.S. scholars of the inherent inferiority and subhuman status of the black race. Morton published data on the inferiority of the black race based on analysis of his collection…

Alain LeRoy Locke was the first African American chosen as a Rhodes scholar. He went to Oxford University planning to leave issues of race behind him in the United States. Oxford's selection committee was shocked to discover he was black. Locke found that racism followed him everywhere, and he dedicated himself to advancing the cause of the black…

This memoir describes Jackie Robinson's historic career as the first black player in major league baseball, emphasizing his courage and determination in the face of racism, and recounting the background to his entry into baseball. (SLD)

Gunnar Myrdal's "An American Dilemma," revered as a monumental work on race relations, benefited from uncanny historical timing. As it repudiated racism and second-class citizenship, it also stayed within safe political limits for the time. The author never committed to policies that would secure real citizenship for African Americans.…