Equality is a fundamental American value. The nation's Declaration of Independence declared equality as a self-evident foundation for political life and the pursuit of equality has continued to dominate policy debates in the twenty-first century. However, equality is a complex idea and it has had different meanings in different eras. Using a variety of data sources, this book describes how the views we hold regarding this fundamental national value developed as products of our cultural history from the origins of the American republic to 2020. It traces how cultural transmission, political and economic structures, and communication technology have shaped this core American value. The book begins with the early days of the American republic and follows ideological changes through the era of the self-made man, the rise of corporate society, the New Deal, the post-World War II era, and the era of Civil Rights. It ends with a detailed discussion of how this history has resulted in some of the most divisive political and social controversies of the twenty-first century. Most studies of equality have taken this as having a single, clear meaning. Most often, this has been either how much equality of opportunity exists now or has existed in the past, or how much equality of condition exists now or has existed in the past. They rarely consider that people can be equal or unequal in different ways, and that what we mean when we talk about equality or engage in debates about it has been shaped by historical experience. This book is a work of historical sociology that examines the forces that have shaped and re-shaped this fundamental cultural value. The book leads readers through an exploration of how different stages of American history have led to thinking about equality in terms of independence from hierarchy, the opportunity for self-creation, access to services and resources, widespread upward mobility, and equality across social categories. It takes a unique multidisciplinary approach, combining intellectual and cultural history with political, economic, and sociological analysis. No other book offers this kind of analysis of the both the historical origins and contemporary consequences of a cultural concept at the core of American national life. American Ideas of Equality will be a valuable resource for academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in American studies; cultural, economic, and political history; political science; and sociology.

Winner of the New Scholar’s Book Award from the American Educational Research Association The abolitionist movement not only helped bring an end to slavery in the United States but also inspired the large-scale admission of African Americans to the country’s colleges and universities. Oberlin College changed the face of American higher education in 1835 when it began enrolling students irrespective of race and sex. Camaraderie among races flourished at the Ohio institution and at two other leading abolitionist colleges, Berea in Kentucky and New York Central, where Black and white students allied in the fight for emancipation and civil rights. After Reconstruction, however, color lines emerged on even the most progressive campuses. For new generations of white students and faculty, ideas of fairness toward African Americans rarely extended beyond tolerating their presence in the classroom, and overt acts of racial discrimination grew increasingly common by the 1880s. John Frederick Bell’s Degrees of Equality analyzes the trajectory of interracial reform at Oberlin, New York Central, and Berea, noting its implications for the progress of racial justice in both the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. Drawing on student and alumni writings, institutional records, and promotional materials, Bell interrogates how abolitionists and their successors put their principles into practice. The ultimate failure of these social experiments illustrates a tragic irony of abolitionism, as the achievement of African American freedom and citizenship led whites to divest from the project of racial pluralism.

The author looks to the origins of equality in Greek thought and the idea's important in the eighteenth century to understand the tenacious attraction it has had for American over more than two hundred years of political, legal, and social controversy.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Philosophische Fakultät II - Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Als 1791 die US-amerikanische Verfassung mit den ersten zehn Zusätzen versehen wurde, stellte einer ihrer wichtigsten Grundsätze die Freiheit des Einzelnen dar. Um die politische Einheit der Bundesstaaten zu erreichen, mußten bereits bei der Ausarbeitung der Verfassung weitreichende Kompromisse eingegangen werden. Sie führten letztlich zum Abspalten der Südstaaten und zu einem Bürgerkrieg. Dessen ursprüngliches Motiv war der Erhalt der Union. Als Resultat formulieren wir heute die Abschaffung der Sklaverei und die Neuordnung der Vereinigten Staaten auf der Basis von neuen Prinzipien, die nicht mehr vordergründig die Freiheit des Einzelnen gegenüber der Regierung betonten, sondern die Gleichheit vor dem Gesetz. An dieser Stelle setzt das Thema meiner Arbeit an. Ziel ist eine Beschreibung der Notwendigkeit eines Paradigmawechsels von Freiheit zu Gleichheit. Vor dem Hintergrund der unterschiedlichen sozialen Situation von Afroamerikanern und Weißen in den Vereinigten Staaten, die, wie gezeigt wird, eine Folge von Sklaverei und Rassentrennung sind, wird das Konzept von Freiheit mit dem Konzept von Gleichheit in Beziehung gesetzt. Das schließt einen Exkurs in die Ideengeschichte dieser Konzepte und der amerikanischen Verfassung ein. Darüber hinaus erfolgt eine Beschreibung der unterschiedlichen Lebenswelten von Weißen und Afroamerikanern damals und heute und eine Analyse der Faktoren, die zu dieser Situation führten. Einen großen Raum der Arbeit nimmt die Herausbildung und Wahrnehmung der Konflikte ein, die sich auf Grund der propagierten Ziele der Revolution und der begrenzten Möglichkeiten zu ihrer Durchsetzung ergaben. Sklaverei wird in diesem Zusammenhang als die Institution beschrieben, die maßgeblich zur Herausbildung und Wahrn

Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the greatest commentators on the American political tradition, viewed it through the lens of two related ideas: liberty and equality. These ideas, so eloquently framed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, have remained inextricably and uniquely conjoined in American political thought: equality is understood as the equal possession of natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By considering American reflections on these core ideas over time—in relation to constitutional principles, religion, and race—this volume provides an especially insightful perspective for understanding our political tradition. The book is at once a summary of American history told through ideas and an inquiry into the ideas of liberty and equality through the lens of American history. To a remarkable extent, American politics has always been thoughtful and American thought has always been political. In these pages, we see how some of our greatest minds have grappled with the issues of liberty and equality: Tocqueville and Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton as Publius in The Federalist, James Madison, George Washington, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In essays responding to these primary sources, some of today's finest scholars take up topics critical to the American experiment in liberal democracy—political inequality, federalism, the separation of powers, the relationship between religion and politics, the history of slavery and the legacy of racism. Together these essays and sources help to clarify the character, content, and significance of American political thought taken as a whole. They illuminate and continue the conversation that has animated and distinguished the American political tradition from the beginning—and, hopefully, better equip readers to contribute to that conversation.

“A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Hurston Wright Legacy Award Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Selection Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).