This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.

Throughout its history, America's policies have alternatively embraced human rights, regarded them with ambivalence, or rejected them out of hand. The essays in this volume put these shifting political winds into a larger historical perspective, from the country's very beginnings to the present day.

This three-volume set chronicles the history of human rights in the United States from the perspective of domestic social justice activism. First, the set examines the political forces and historic events that resulted in the U.S.'s failure to embrace human rights principles at home while actively (albeit selectively) championing and promoting human rights abroad. It then considers the current explosion of human rights activism around issues within the United States and the way human rights is transforming domestic social justice work. The first volume provides a historical perspective on the United States' ambivalent relationship with the international human rights movement. It examines the implications of recognizing domestic rights violations as a matter of international concern and the relationship between international and domestic law. It also addresses the role the Cold War and Southern opposition to international scrutiny of its Jim Crow policies and segregation played in shaping U.S. attitudes toward human rights generally and social and economic rights in particular. These factors forced social justice organizations to largely abandon employing a human rights framework in their domestic work and had a lasting impact on U.S. perspectives about fundamental rights and the role of government. The set also chronicles current domestic human rights work. Volumes two and three consider why domestic activists currently are using human rights and the tactical advantages and practical challenges posed by such strategies. These volumes cover everything from globalization to terrorism and the erosion of civil rights protections that led to a renewed interest in human rights; human rights versus civil rights strategies; and the different ways human rights can support social activism.

Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely celebrated as an American civil rights hero. Yet King's nonviolent opposition to racism, militarism, and economic injustice had deeper roots and more radical implications than is commonly appreciated, Thomas F. Jackson argues in this searching reinterpretation of King's public ministry. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, King was influenced by and in turn reshaped the political cultures of the black freedom movement and democratic left. His vision of unfettered human rights drew on the diverse tenets of the African American social gospel, socialism, left-New Deal liberalism, Gandhian philosophy, and Popular Front internationalism. King's early leadership reached beyond southern desegregation and voting rights. As the freedom movement of the 1950s and early 1960s confronted poverty and economic reprisals, King championed trade union rights, equal job opportunities, metropolitan integration, and full employment. When the civil rights and antipoverty policies of the Johnson administration failed to deliver on the movement's goals of economic freedom for all, King demanded that the federal government guarantee jobs, income, and local power for poor people. When the Vietnam war stalled domestic liberalism, King called on the nation to abandon imperialism and become a global force for multiracial democracy and economic justice. Drawing widely on published and unpublished archival sources, Jackson explains the contexts and meanings of King's increasingly open call for "a radical redistribution of political and economic power" in American cities, the nation, and the world. The mid-1960s ghetto uprisings were in fact revolts against unemployment, powerlessness, police violence, and institutionalized racism, King argued. His final dream, a Poor People's March on Washington, aimed to mobilize Americans across racial and class lines to reverse a national cycle of urban conflict, political backlash, and policy retrenchment. King's vision of economic democracy and international human rights remains a powerful inspiration for those committed to ending racism and poverty in our time.