Rees discusses his family background, education, World War II service, conversion from the Republican to Democratic parties in the early-1950s, agricultural implement business in Mexico, participation in national Democratic Party conventions from 1956 to 1968, activities as a member of the California State Assembly, California State Senate, and the United States House of Representatives, and comments on a wide range of individuals and issues involved in California and national politics from the 1950s to 1987.

The St. Croix River, the free-flowing boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota, is a federally protected National Scenic Riverway. The area’s first recorded human inhabitants were the Dakota Indians, whose lands were transformed by fur trade empires and the loggers who called it the “river of pine.” A patchwork of farms, cultivated by immigrants from many countries, followed the cutover forests. Today, the St. Croix River Valley is a tourist haven in the land of sky-blue waters and a peaceful escape for residents of the bustling Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan region. North Woods River is a thoughtful biography of the river over the course of more than three hundred years. Eileen McMahon and Theodore Karamanski track the river’s social and environmental transformation as newcomers changed the river basin and, in turn, were changed by it. The history of the St. Croix revealed here offers larger lessons about the future management of beautiful and fragile wild waters.

From the Upstate to the Lowcountry, African Americans have had a gigantic impact on the Palmetto State. Unfortunately, their stories are often overshadowed. Collected here for the first time, this selection of essays by historian Damon L. Fordham brings these stories to light. Rediscover the tales of Samuel Smalls, the James Island beggar who inspired DuBose Heywards Porgy, and Denmark Vesey, the architect of the great would-be slave rebellion of 1822. Learn about the blacks who lived and worked at what is now Mepkin Abbey, the Spartanburg woman who took part in a sit-in at the age of eleven and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s visit to Charleston in 1967. These articles are well-researched and provide an enlightening glimpse at the overlooked contributors to South Carolinas past.

In spite of extensive research and publishing on King, insufficient attention has been given to the convergence of ideas and action in his life. In an era where people are often sorted into the categories of “thinker” and “doer,” King stands out—a rare mix of the deeply profound thinker and intellect who put the fruit of that reflection into the service of direct social action.

In 1822, White authorities in Charleston, South Carolina, learned of plans among the city's enslaved and free Black population to lead an armed antislavery rebellion. Among the leaders was a free Black carpenter named Denmark Vesey. After a brief investigation and what some have considered a dubious trial, Vesey and thirty-five others were convicted of attempted insurrection and hanged. Although the rebellion never came to fruition, it nonetheless fueled Black antislavery movements in the United States and elsewhere. To this day, activists, politicians, writers, and scholars debate the significance of the conspiracy, how to commemorate it, and the integrity of the archival records it left behind. Fugitive Movements memorializes this attempted liberation movement with new interpretations of the event as well as comparisons to other Black resistance throughout the Atlantic World—including Africa, the Caribbean, and the Northern United States. This volume situates Denmark Vesey and antislavery rebellion within the current scholarship on abolition that places Black activists at the center of the story. It shows that Black antislavery rebellion in general, and the 1822 uprising by Black Charlestonians in particular, significantly influenced the history of slavery in the Western Hemisphere. The essays collected in this volume explore not only that history, but also the ongoing struggle over the memory of slavery and resistance in the Atlantic World. Manisha Sinha, James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, provides the foreword.