The contributors analyze Thomas Jefferson’s legacy in light of his sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings; the way that Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor, rallied that organization against Chinese immigrant workers; and the eugenicist origins of the early-twentieth-century birth-control movement led by Margaret Sanger. They draw attention to the writing of Sarah Winnemucca, a Northern Piute and one of the first published Native American authors; the anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett; the Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan; and the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who linked civil rights struggles in the United States to anticolonial efforts abroad. Other figures considered include Abraham Lincoln, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina (who fought against Anglo American expansion in what is now Texas), Theodore Roosevelt, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alexis de Tocqueville and his traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont. In the afterword, George Lipsitz reflects on U.S. racial politics since 1965.

Harris contends that 'success' in this area means that the feminist-identified Black women in the Congressional Black Caucus who voted against Clarence Thomas's appointment would have spoken on behalf of Anita Hill; Senator Carol Moseley Braun would have won re-election; Lani Gunier would have had a hearing; Dr. Joycelyn Elders would have maintained her post; and Congresswoman Barbara Lee wouldn't have stood alone in her opposition to the Iraq war resolution.