February is Black History Month. In honor of this occasion, the Law Library will publish a blog each week highlighting resources that focus on African American leaders in their law-related fields: Civil Rights Activists; Justices & Judges; Government Officials; and, Firsts in Their Field.
In this third entry of the series, Government Officials, explore databases that offer access to congressional documents and publications, highlighting legislative histories, committee hearings, reports, and prints, and other resources that feature preeminent African American legislators, past and present, in Congress and the highest office of the nation, the Presidency of the United States. In the spotlight are titles by or about Barack Obama, Colin Powell, John Lewis, Condoleeza Rice, and Shirley Chisholm.
Featured Databases:
ProQuest Congressional
Provides index and abstracts of congressional publications back to 1789, including full text of congressional hearings from 1824-present, full text Committee Prints from 1830-present, full text Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports from 1916-present, and legislative histories from 1969-present, as well as other free services that provide similar or related information such as Thomas (1993-to date) and GPO Access (1993-to date). Formerly LexisNexis Congressional.
ProQuest Legislative Insight
Proquest Legislative Insight is a legislative history service offering full-text PDF versions of publications generated by the United States Congress during the legislative process from 1929 to the present. The publications include the full text of the Public Law, all versions of related bills, law-specific Congressional Record excerpts, committee hearings, reports, and prints. Also included are Presidential signing statements, CRS reports, and miscellaneous congressional publications.
govinfo: Public Papers of the Presidents
(Also in Law Library’s print collection, call number: KF5051.A1U55)
Each Public Papers volume contains the papers and speeches of the President of the United States that were issued by the Office of the Press Secretary during the specified time period. The material is presented in chronological order, and the dates shown in the headings are the dates of the documents or events. In instances when the release date differs from the date of the document itself, that fact is shown in the textnote. Included is Barack Obama’s first term as President, 2009-2012.
Print & Video Resources:
Dreams from My Father : A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Call Number: E185.97.O23A3 2007
Nine years before the Senate campaign that made him one of the most influential and compelling voices in American politics, Barack Obama published this lyrical, unsentimental, and powerfully affecting memoir. Dreams from My Father tells the story of Obama’s struggle to understand the forces that shaped him as the son of a black African father and white American mother — a struggle that takes him from the American heartland to the ancestral home of his great-aunt in the tiny African village of Alego. A searching meditation on the meaning of identity in America, his memoir might be the most revealing portrait we have of a major American leader who has taken a prominent role in healing a fractious and fragmented nation.
The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama
Call Number: E901.1.O23A3 2006
A public servant and a lawyer, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and above all a student of history and human nature, Barack Obama has written a book of transforming power. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, he says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes — “waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”
No Higher Honor : A Memoir of My Years in Washington by Condoleezza Rice
Call Number: E840.8.R48A3 2011
From one of the world’s most admired women, this is Condoleezza Rice’s compelling story of eight years serving at the highest levels of government. A native of Birmingham, Alabama who overcame the racism of the Civil Rights era to become a brilliant academic and expert on foreign affairs, Rice distinguished herself in serving as the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State within the Bush Administration. Surprisingly candid in her appraisals of various colleagues and the hundreds of foreign leaders with whom she dealt, Rice also offers her keen insight into how history actually proceeds. In No Higher Honor, she delivers a master class in statecraft — but always in a way that reveals her essential warmth and humility, and her deep reverence for the ideals on which America was founded.
Colin Powell : A Political Biography by Christopher D. O’Sullivan
Call Number: E840.5.P68O885 2010
In this exploration of Powell’s career and character, Christopher D. O’Sullivan reveals several broad themes crucial to American foreign policy and yields insights into the evolution of American foreign and defense policy in the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War eras. O’Sullivan’s book not only explains Powell’s diplomatic style, it provides crucial insights into the American foreign policy tradition in the modern era.
Walking with the Wind : A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis
Call Number: E840.8.L43A3 2015
The award-winning national bestseller, Walking with the Wind, is one of the most important records of the American civil rights movement. Told by John Lewis, it is a gripping first-hand account of the fight for civil rights and the courage it takes to change a nation. Inspired by his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lewis’s vision and perseverance altered history. In 1986, he ran and won a congressional seat in Georgia, and remains in office to this day, continuing to enact change.
Chisholm ’72 : Unbought & Unbossed
Call Number: E840.8.C48C55 2004 DVD
This documentary examines the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and the first to seek a presidential nomination. Following Chisholm from her candidacy announcement through her historic speech in Miami at the Democratic National Convention, this film about a champion of marginalized Americans illuminates Chisholm’s groundbreaking initiative as well as political and social currents still very much alive today.
Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 United States. Congress. House. Committee on House Administration.
Call Number: E185.96.B526 2008
Provides a comprehensive history of the more than 120 African Americans who have served in the United States Congress. Written for a general audience, this book contains a profile of each African-American Member, including notables such as Hiram Revels, Joseph Rainey, Oscar De Priest, Adam Clayton Powell, Shirley Chisholm, Gus Hawkins, and Barbara Jordan. Individual profiles are introduced by contextual essays that explain major events in congressional and U.S. history. Illustrated with many portraits, photographs, and charts. A website, Black Americans in Congress, is based upon this book.
