Free Slave Nation by Alfred W. Blumrosen Page A

learned much about these complexities working with those involved in civil rights activities. We were privileged to know workers who were male and female, black, white, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific, as well as employers, unions, and civil rights organizations. We saw government, both as participants in its activities and as litigants against it. Eleanor Holmes Norton, with whom we worked during her years as chair of the New York Commission on Human Rights and the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has always been a tower of strength, critical judgment, and warm friendship.
    Most of all, we admired those men and women of the 1960s who had faith that a government that had ignored them for so long would help bring justice into the realities of their workplaces. They came to the then-new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at great personal risk, in the hopes of influencing those workplace realities they had long endured. The example of their courage has sustained us through difficult times.
    To our agent, Ron Goldfarb, who had confidence in the book, and to our editor Hillel “LeGree” Black, his assistant Sarah Tucker, and our distant editor Michelle Schoob, we are indebted for critical and supportive commentary, and the publication of this book.
    Our sons, Steven and Alex, read, reviewed, criticized, and encouraged multiple versions of the book as they evolved through the years, along with lots of conversation and not a little argument. They have been patient and helpful at every turn. Alex usually gave advice, counsel, and criticism from Paris where he practices law. Steven has been more closely involved in recent years, in editing, advising, revising, and researching text and images; in solving computer problems; and in countless other ways supporting our efforts. His daughter Erica alphabetized our growing library and helped with the bibliography and footnotes. Frederica Wechsler fine-tuned the final version of our text.

 
Introduction
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    This fascinating and readable book about the conundrum of black slavery and the birth of a free nation is an exacting history by two remarkable scholars who have distinguished themselves as lawyers and intellectuals. Although the Blumrosens are not professional historians, the history of slavery and discrimination has had an important place in their personal and professional lives. Living with the consequences of this history in our country fueled their lifelong dedication to racial justice and their work as civil rights lawyers. Their strong professional bonds nurtured their remarkable, loving marriage as well. They worked together as lawyers, scholars, and professors, sometimes on the same subjects, but often not. Theirs was a lifelong partnership of parallel interests, professions, scholarship, and now this final collaboration.
    The Blumrosens’ work to eliminate discrimination based on race, sex, religion, and national origin has been rooted in the nation’s racial history. They were among a small band of lawyers who developed path-breaking legal theory and converted it to judicial doctrine. History assumed pragmatic importance in the search for the first effective remedies for discrimination, often becoming the predicate for the new remedies that finally emerged.
    As legal pioneers in the field of equal employment law, the Blumrosens could not afford to be strangers to history. Understanding the history of slavery and discrimination has been essential to the remedies they helped fashion in race and sex discrimination law. Three centuries of the cumulative consequences of discrimination required strong remedies, but they could be justified only by unusual circumstances. Those circumstances were found in our nation’s unusual history.
    Slave Nation
is a logical if unpredictable product of the interest of these two lawyers in the close relationship between American law and America’s racial history. In this book, the Blumrosens have gone beyond the uses of