Right In Michigans Grassroots

"A real contribution to Michigan history that gets to the root of the movements in twentieth-century American history that upon reflection can bring a certain discomfort and unease." ---Francis X. Blouin, Director of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Throughout the twentieth century, Michigan became home to nearly every political movement in America that emerged from the grassroots. Citizens organized on behalf of concerns on the "left," on the "right," and in the "middle of the road." Right in Michigan's Grassroots: From the KKK to the Michigan Militia is about the people who supported movements that others, then and later, would denounce as disgraceful---members of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, the followers of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, anti-Communists and the John Birch Society in the post–World War II era, and the members of the Michigan Militia who first appeared in the 1990s. The book explores the complex historical circumstances in Michigan that prompted the emergence of these organizations and led everyday men and women to head off, despite ridicule or condemnation, with plans unsanctioned and tactics unorthodox, variously brandishing weapons of intimidation, discrimination, fearmongering, and terror. Drawing heavily on primary sources, including the organizations' files and interviews with some of their leaders and surviving members, JoEllen Vinyard provides a far more complete portrait of these well-known extremist groups than has ever been available.

An unsettling look at the history of right-wing political movements in Michigan

The history of Michigan is a fascinating story of breathtaking geography enriched by an abundant water supply, of bold fur traders and missionaries who developed settlements that grew into major cities, of ingenious entrepreneurs who established thriving industries, and of celebrated cultural icons like the Motown sound. It is also the story of the exploitation of Native Americans, racial discord that resulted in a devastating riot, and ongoing tensions between employers and unions. Michigan: A History of Explorers, Entrepreneurs, and Everyday People recounts this colorful past and the significant role the state has played in shaping the United States. Well-researched and engagingly written, the book spans from Michigan’s geologic formation to important 21st-century developments in a concise but detailed chronicle that will appeal to general readers, scholars, and students interested in Michigan’s past, present, and future.

In God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Right in American Politics, a distinguished group of political scientists, many of whom have been studying the Christian Right for more than two decades, assess the 2016 elections from the standpoint of religious conservative activism. These elections, more than any that they have analyzed, best tell the story of the resilience of this movement and its enduring importance. The contributors address the evolution of the religious right movement for more than two decades and focus primarily on the movement’s role in the 2016 elections. The first section examines the broader national context, with chapters on the Republican nomination campaign, the general election, and the relationship between the religious right and the tea party. The second section comprises state-specific chapters, focusing primarily on the crucial states in the 2016 presidential contest. They conclude with lessons learned from the studies of the religious right in the elections from 1994 through 2016 and address directions for continued research on the subject. Contributions by Joseph Cella, Kimberly H. Conger, Matthew Corrigan, Paul A. Djupe, Christopher P. Gilbert, James L. Guth, Donna R. Hoffman, Ted G. Jelen, Alexander Jensen, Christopher W. Larimer, Mikael Pelz, Sucheta Pyakuryal, Carin Robinson, Mark J. Rozell, Corwin E. Smidt, Oran P. Smith, Kenneth D. Wald, Clyde Wilcox, and Abigail Zofchak

The rapid growth of the conservative movement has long fascinated historians, many of whom have focused on the grassroots efforts in the Sunbelt. Empire of Direct Mail examines how conservative operatives got their message out to their supporters through computerized direct mail, a significant but understudied communications technology. The story centers on Richard Viguerie, a pioneer of political direct mail who was known as the “Funding Father” of the conservative movement. His consulting firm established a database of conservative prospects and mailed millions of unsolicited letters. By the 1970s, Viguerie emerged as the central fundraiser in conservative politics, financing right-wing organizations and politicians such as George Wallace, Jesse Helms, and Ronald Reagan. Moriyama shows that the rise of right-wing direct mail communication in the postwar years coincided with a new strategy: the use of this new technology to stoke negative emotions, such as fury and fear, among the letter recipients. In the period of broadcasting, conservative fundraisers established the new approach of targeting individual voters and promoting negative emotions to win elections. Before Rush Limbaugh’s talk show, Fox News, Twitter, and Cambridge Analytica, conservatives used direct mail to spread messages of anxiety and anger to raise funds and mobilize the grassroots. Through extensive archival research of fundraising activities in the conservative movement and key elections from 1950 to 1980, Empire of Direct Mail offers a political history of the role played by communications technology in the development of modern US conservatism.

The definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the enduring legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection—from acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin. Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement. Speaking to his lawyers days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from memory: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great. New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.” But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.

A powerful and inspiring biography of Merze Tate, a trailblazing Black woman scholar and intrepid world traveler Shortlisted for the Stone Book Award, sponsored by the Museum of African American History Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905-1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despite living in what she called a "sex and race discriminating world." Against all odds, the brilliant and hardworking Tate earned degrees in international relations from Oxford University in 1935 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1941. She then joined the faculty of Howard University, where she taught for three decades of her long life spanning the tumultuous twentieth century. This book revives and critiques Tate's prolific and prescient body of scholarship, with topics ranging from nuclear arms limitations to race and imperialism in India, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Tate credited her success to other women, Black and white, who helped her realize her dream of becoming a scholar. Her quest for research and adventure took her around the world twice, traveling solo with her cameras. Barbara Savage's skilled rendering of Tate's story is built on more than a decade of research. Tate's life and work challenge provincial approaches to African American and American history, women's history, the history of education, diplomatic history, and international thought.

As poor and working people organized themselves on the job, in the streets, and at the polls during the mid-twentieth century, they forced Republicans to reckon with new demands for political and social citizenship in big cities across the Northeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast. While rightwing Republicans mobilized to crush those movements, Making Republicans Liberal explores how another wing of the party responded to intensifying mass movement pressure. Beginning in the 1930s, Republican governors such as Earl Warren of California, George Romney of Michigan, and Nelson Rockefeller of New York spent the next four decades articulating their own vision of liberalism. These Republican liberals believed that strategically they could not win elections and govern in places where unions, civil rights groups, and other social movements organized voters. What may have begun as an opportunistic strategy soon mutated into an ideological commitment to use state power to realize working people’s demands for a greater say, and stake, in the decisions governing their lives. Republican liberals accepted labor’s right to organize, legislated antidiscrimination laws, and legalized abortion. Yet at the same time, each of those policies proved weaker than the alternatives supported by organized labor or mainline civil rights groups and paled in comparison to what people on strike and on the march really wanted. Kristoffer Smemo shows how this was the contradiction of Republican liberalism as a policy program and as an ideology. The reforms it ushered in at once asked too much from core, conservative Republican constituencies and offered too little to the movements struggling for change. As the movements making Republicans compromise fragmented and collapsed in the late twentieth century, so too did the material foundation for Republican liberalism.