The Color of America Has Changed
How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978
Mark Brilliant
Reviews and Awards
Honorable Mention, Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize of the American Society for Legal History
"Rarely does a book cast a well-known, heavily trafficked subject area such as civil rights in an entirely new light. However, Mark Brilliant's The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California accomplishes precisely that...Compelling."--Law and History Review
"This ambitious and sweeping book is beautifully written and incredibly timely. With optimism and humanity, Mark Brilliant relates the long-overlooked history of the multiracial struggles for civil rights in twentieth-century California. The Color of America Has Changed challenges us to move beyond the black-white paradigm of civil rights while incisively analyzing the complexities that have long bedeviled a broader perspective. This book has the power to transform our national conversation about American racial equality."--Risa Goluboff, author of The Lost Promise of Civil Rights
"This deeply researched, comprehensive, and ground-breaking history of mid-twentieth century California demonstrates the importance of including the entire country in the story of the struggle for civil rights. Mark Brilliant's book is essential reading for understanding a past that isn't close to being over yet."--John Mack Faragher, Yale University
"In this much anticipated book, Mark Brilliant has written the essential history of California's multiracial civil rights movements. No one interested in race and politics in modern America can afford to ignore this carefully crafted, powerful book."--Robert O. Self, Brown University
"California has long been the most racially diverse state in the nation, and since World War II has been in the forefront of dismantling America's racial regime. In this deeply researched and utterly convincing history, Mark Brilliant reveals how California's multiple 'color lines' have complicated the prospect of cross-racial cooperation as Asian, Mexican, and African Americans pursued similar civil rights goals along different and often conflicting legal and political trajectories. The Color of America Has Changed gives us much to think about as we ponder how the most racially diverse nation in the world will-or will not-become a more perfect union."--Neil Foley, author of Quest for Equality: The Failed Promise of Black-Brown Solidarity
"The problem of the twentieth century, argues Mark Brilliant in this important book, was the problem of color lines. California's diversity posed real challenges for activists and policymakers attempting to deal with the inequalities of race and ethnicity. Brilliant's history of California's 'wide civil rights movement' undermines the simple dualisms and racial romanticism that still dominate twentieth-century histories of the struggles for minority rights."--Thomas J. Sugrue, author of Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
"Brillant's writing is inventive and compelling and the research is exhaustive and impecably documented."--Daniel Martinez HoSang, University of Oregon
"The seminal work defining the western civil rights movement....The Color of America Has Changed is required reading for twentieth-century American historians, especially those concerned with social and civil rights and with ethno-cultural and legal history."--History: Reviews of New Books
"Mark Brilliant has written a stirring narrative of the political and legal efforts to address racial injustice during the post-World War II period of California history....He weaves together a wonderfully complex story of multiple actors and organizations that labored on local, statewide, and national levels to address institutionalized racism in the workplace and the home....A superlative contribution toward a more broadened vision."--Western History Quarterly
