Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. By Megan Ming Francis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 197 pp., $27.99 paper.

• Published date: 01 June 2015
• Date: 01 June 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12144

understand the visual salience of race; he has also provided a

grounded and deep critique of the common sense American

understanding that “colorblindness” will lead to justice. Reading

Obasogie, one becomes increasingly certain that a commitment to

racial justice means that we all—sighted or not—must endeavor

to see race.

References

L

opez, Ian Haney (2003) Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

Flagg, Barbara J. (1993) “Was Blind, But Now I See: White Race Consciousness and the

Requirements of Discriminatory Intent,” 91 Michigan Law Review, 958.

***

Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State. By Megan

Ming Francis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 197

pp., $27.99 paper.

Reviewed by Jeb Barnes, Department of Political Science, University

of Southern California

Megan Ming Francis’ new book, Civil Rights and the Making of the

Modern American State, tells the story of how the early anti-

lynching crusade of the National Association for the Advance-

ment of Colored People (NAACP) shaped the modern civil rights

movement. The book is crisply written, well-documented, and

powerfully argued. It should be read by anyone interested in the

history of civil rights in the United States as well as American

Political Development (APD), institutional choice, and social

movements. The book represents a key contribution to a growing

trend that seeks to understand the micro-foundations of the evo-

lution of the American state and federal policy, which offers a

decentered account of institutional development in American pol-

itics and underscores the role of groups in creating opportunities

for change from the bottom-up.

At its core, Francis’ book is a fascinating political history that

seeks to fill a gap in our understanding of the civil rights move-

ment in the United States. Whereas most accounts begin with the

540 Book Reviews