Congressman Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) was a New York City congressman who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1923 to 1973. Celler’s almost fifty-year career was highlighted by his long fight to eliminate national origin quotas as a basis for immigration restrictions and his battles for civil rights legislation. In Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion, author Wayne Dawkins introduces new readers to a figure integral to our contemporary political system. Celler’s own immigrant background framed his lifelong opposition to immigration restrictions and his corresponding support for reducing barriers for immigrant entry into the United States. After decades of struggle, he proposed and steered through the House the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which eliminated national origins as a consideration for immigration, profoundly shaping modern America. Celler was also a consistent advocate for civil rights. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1973 (except for a break from 1953 to 1955), Celler was involved in drafting and passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. During his career he was also deeply involved in landmark antitrust legislation, the establishment of US ties with the state of Israel, and the Gun Control Act of 1968, and was the author of three constitutional amendments, including the 25th that established presidential succession. Dawkins profiles a complex politician who shaped the central tenets of Democratic Party liberalism for much of the twentieth century and whose work remains central to the nation, and our political debates, today. From author Wayne Dawkins: Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) could be the most significant US legislator of the twentieth century. He cosponsored three Constitutional amendments—the twenty-third (voting rights for District of Columbia residents), the twenty-fourth (poll taxes banned), and the twenty-fifth (clear succession established if the president is removed from office). And, as a longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he reluctantly cosponsored a fourth—the twenty-sixth amendment (18-year-old voting rights). He is also linked to three-hundred laws, notably the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and his masterpiece, the Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act of 1965. Over the past decade, Celler, who served fifty years in Congress, has been a supporting cast member in at least a dozen books about immigration or civil rights. He was frequently cited in One Mighty and Irresistible Tide (2020) and noted in two key moments of The Guarded Gate (2019). And he was cited generously in Goliath (2019), a book about Celler’s other passion—antitrust and monopoly busting. But this fall, he will at last be the focus of a full-length biography, Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion. And I believe it will become the go-to book for anyone wanting to know more about this history-making legislator.

Congressman Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) was a New York City congressman who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1923 to 1973. Celler’s almost fifty-year career was highlighted by his long fight to eliminate national origin quotas as a basis for immigration restrictions and his battles for civil rights legislation. In Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion, author Wayne Dawkins introduces new readers to a figure integral to our contemporary political system. Celler’s own immigrant background framed his lifelong opposition to immigration restrictions and his corresponding support for reducing barriers for immigrant entry into the United States. After decades of struggle, he proposed and steered through the House the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which eliminated national origins as a consideration for immigration, profoundly shaping modern America. Celler was also a consistent advocate for civil rights. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1973 (except for a break from 1953 to 1955), Celler was involved in drafting and passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. During his career he was also deeply involved in landmark antitrust legislation, the establishment of US ties with the state of Israel, and the Gun Control Act of 1968, and was the author of three constitutional amendments, including the 25th that established presidential succession. Dawkins profiles a complex politician who shaped the central tenets of Democratic Party liberalism for much of the twentieth century and whose work remains central to the nation, and our political debates, today. From author Wayne Dawkins: Emanuel Celler (1888–1981) could be the most significant US legislator of the twentieth century. He cosponsored three Constitutional amendments—the twenty-third (voting rights for District of Columbia residents), the twenty-fourth (poll taxes banned), and the twenty-fifth (clear succession established if the president is removed from office). And, as a longtime chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he reluctantly cosponsored a fourth—the twenty-sixth amendment (18-year-old voting rights). He is also linked to three-hundred laws, notably the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and his masterpiece, the Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act of 1965. Over the past decade, Celler, who served fifty years in Congress, has been a supporting cast member in at least a dozen books about immigration or civil rights. He was frequently cited in One Mighty and Irresistible Tide (2020) and noted in two key moments of The Guarded Gate (2019). And he was cited generously in Goliath (2019), a book about Celler’s other passion—antitrust and monopoly busting. But this fall, he will at last be the focus of a full-length biography, Emanuel Celler: Immigration and Civil Rights Champion. And I believe it will become the go-to book for anyone wanting to know more about this history-making legislator.

Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Book Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A "powerful and cogent" (Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post) account of the twentieth-century battle for immigration reform that set the stage for today’s roiling debates. The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from southern and eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, from the indefatigable congressman Emanuel Celler and senator Herbert Lehman to the bull-headed Nevada senator Pat McCarran, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law. Through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and a McCarthyist fever, a coalition of lawmakers and activists descended from Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants fought to establish a new principle of equality in the American immigration system. Their crowning achievement, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, proved to be one of the most transformative laws in the country’s history, opening the door to nonwhite migration at levels never seen before—and changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined. Framed movingly by her own family’s story of immigration to America, Yang’s One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is a deeply researched and illuminating work of history, one that shows how Americans have strived and struggled to live up to the ideal of a home for the “huddled masses,” as promised in Emma Lazarus’s famous poem.

A new account of support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine in the United States and Europe from 1945 to 1949.

The year 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1965—a landmark decision that made the United States the diverse nation it is today. In The Law that Changed the Face of America, congressional journalist and immigration expert Margaret Sands Orchowski delivers a never before told story of how immigration laws have moved in constant flux and revision throughout our nation’s history. Exploring the changing immigration environment of the twenty-first century, Orchowski discusses globalization, technology, terrorism, economic recession, and the expectations of the millennials. She also addresses the ever present U.S. debate about the roles of the various branches of government in immigration; and the often competitive interests between those who want to immigrate to the United States and the changing interests, values, ability, and right of our sovereign nation states to choose and welcome those immigrants who will best advance the country.

In 1966, a year after the Voting Rights Act began liberating millions of southern blacks, New Yorkers challenged a political system that weakened their voting power. Andrew W. Cooper (1927–2002), a beer company employee, sued state officials in a case called Cooper vs. Power. In 1968, the courts agreed that black citizens were denied the right to elect an authentic representative of their community. The 12th Congressional District was redrawn. Shirley Chisholm, a member of Cooper's political club, ran for the new seat and made history as the first black woman elected to Congress. Cooper became a journalist, a political columnist, then founder of Trans Urban News Service and the City Sun, a feisty Brooklyn-based weekly that published from 1984 to 1996. Whether the stories were about Mayor Koch or Rev. Al Sharpton, Howard Beach or Crown Heights, Tawana Brawley's dubious rape allegations, the Daily News Four trial, or Spike Lee's filmmaking career, Cooper's City Sun commanded attention and moved officials and readers to action. Cooper's leadership also gave Brooklyn—particularly predominantly black central Brooklyn—an identity. It is no accident that in the twenty-first century the borough crackles with energy. Cooper fought tirelessly for the community's vitality when it was virtually abandoned by the civic and business establishments in the mid-to-late twentieth century. In addition, scores of journalists trained by Cooper are keeping his spirit alive.