Junior History Paper Topics

Antebellum ordeals: slavery, sport, and the prospects of freedom -- Striving for success: African American athletes in the early period of Jim Crow, 1865-1915 -- Parallel institutions: Black sports between the world wars -- Quest for racial reform: affirmation and protest in the sporting realm, 1920s and 1930s -- African American athletes and democratic principles: interpreting the desegregation of sport, 1940s and 1950s -- Sport, the Civil Rights Movement, and Black Power, 1960s and 1970s -- Progress, protest, and alienation in the sports factory, 1970s and beyond -- Black cultural commentary: race relations and sport at the turn of the Twenty-first century

Collection of key primary documents relating to desegregation in the U.S. Topics include the arguments offered for and against racial segregation, the role of federal, state and local governments, and the nature and importance of protest and civil disobedience. The final chapter is devoted to social and residential segregation in the North, which differed from the legally imposed segregation of the South.

From Plessy to Brown : the rise and demise of "separate but equal" -- Metropolitan Detroit : from boomtown to ticking time bomb -- Separate but unequal, northern style -- Act 48 : decentralization trumps desegregation -- Cross-district integration : remedying segregation or penalizing the suburbs? -- Getting off the bus : Milliken in the Supreme Court -- Milliken II and the retreat from school desegregation.

Mexican-Americans in California -- From Lemon Grove to the zoot suit riots -- The parents decide to sue -- Race, ethnicity, and trial strategies -- The trial begins -- "We always tell our children they are Americans" -- The experts testify -- Judge McCormick decides -- From the Court of Appeals to the state legislature.