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Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the 2022 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History One of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, Northern and Southern, in the decades before the Civil War. The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to place, work, vote, and attend public school. But over time, African American activists and their white allies, often facing mob violence, courageously built a movement to fight these racist laws. They countered the states’ insistences that states were merely trying to maintain the domestic peace with the equal-rights promises they found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They were pastors, editors, lawyers, politicians, ship captains, and countless ordinary men and women, and they fought in the press, the courts, the state legislatures, and Congress, through petitioning, lobbying, party politics, and elections. Long stymied by hostile white majorities and unfavorable court decisions, the movement’s ideals became increasingly mainstream in the 1850s, particularly among supporters of the new Republican party. When Congress began rebuilding the nation after the Civil War, Republicans installed this vision of racial equality in the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment. These were the landmark achievements of the first civil rights movement. Kate Masur’s magisterial history delivers this pathbreaking movement in vivid detail. Activists such as John Jones, a free Black tailor from North Carolina whose opposition to the Illinois “black laws” helped make the case for racial equality, demonstrate the indispensable role of African Americans in shaping the American ideal of equality before the law. Without enforcement, promises of legal equality were not enough. But the antebellum movement laid the foundation for a racial justice tradition that remains vital to this day.
The movement for civil rights in America peaked in the 1950s and1960s; however, a closely related struggle, this time over themovement's legacy, has been heatedly engaged over the past twodecades. How the civil rights movement is currently being rememberedin American politics and culture - and why it matters - is the commontheme of the thirteen essays in this unprecedented collection.Memories of the movement are being created and maintained - in waysand for purposes we sometimes only vaguely perceive - throughmemorials, art exhibits, community celebrations, and even streetnames.
This book extends what we know about the development of civil rights and the role of the NAACP in American politics. Through a sweeping archival analysis of the NAACP's battle against lynching and mob violence from 1909 to 1923, this book examines how the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, secured the support of Congress, and won a landmark criminal procedure case in front of the Supreme Court.
Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction
"Owen Dwyer and Derek Alderman examine civil rights memorials as cultural landscapes, offering the first book-length critical reading of the monuments, museums, parts, streets, and sites dedicated to the African-American struggle for civil rights and interpreting them is the context of the Movement's broader history and its current scene. In paying close attention to which stories, people, and places are remembered and which are forgotten, the authors present an engaging account of an unforgettable story."--BOOK JACKET.
The U.S. Civil Rights Trail offers a vivid glimpse into the story of Black America's fight for freedom and equality. From eye-opening landmarks to celebrations of triumph over adversity, experience a tangible piece of history with Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail. Flexible Itineraries: Travel the entire trail through the South, or take a weekend getaway to Charleston, Birmingham, Jackson, Memphis, Washington DC, and more places significant to the Civil Rights Movement Historic Civil Rights Sites: Learn about Dr. King's legacy at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, be transformed at the small but mighty Emmett Till Intrepid Center, and stand tall with Little Rock Nine at their memorial in Arkansas The Culture of the Movement: Get to know the voices, stories, music, and flavors that shape and celebrate Black America both then and now. Take a seat at a lunch counter where sit-ins took place or dig in to heaping plates of soul food and barbecue. Spend the day at museums that connect our present to the past or spend the night in the birthplace of the blues Expert Insight: Award-winning journalist Deborah Douglas offers her valuable perspective and knowledge, including suggestions for engaging with local communities by supporting Black-owned businesses and seeking out activist groups Travel Tools: Find driving directions for exploring the sites on a road trip, tips on where to stay, and full-color photos and maps throughout Detailed coverage of: Charleston, Atlanta, Selma to Montgomery, Birmingham, Jackson, the Mississippi Delta, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Raleigh, Durham, Virginia, and Washington DC Foreword by Bree Newsome Bass: activist, filmmaker, and artist Journey through history, understand struggles past and present, and get inspired to create a better future with Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail. About Moon Travel Guides: Moon was founded in 1973 to empower independent, active, and conscious travel. We prioritize local businesses, outdoor recreation, and traveling strategically and sustainably. Moon Travel Guides are written by local, expert authors with great stories to tell—and they can't wait to share their favorite places with you. For more inspiration, follow @moonguides on social media.
Presents a collection of essays about the history of the civil rights movement, focusing on the efforts of clergy, student activists, black nationalists, and such organizations as the NCAAP and Core to bring about racial equality.
Since at least the time of Tocqueville, observers have noted that Americans draw on the language of rights when expressing dissatisfaction with political and social conditions. As the United States confronts a complicated set of twenty-first-century problems, that tradition continues, with Americans invoking symbolic events of the founding era to frame calls for change. Most observers have been critical of such “rights talk.” Scholars on the left worry that it limits the range of political demands to those that can be articulated as legally recognized rights, while conservatives fear that it creates unrealistic expectations of entitlement. Drawing on a remarkable cache of Depression-era complaint letters written by ordinary Americans to the Justice Department, George I. Lovell challenges these common claims. Although the letters were written prior to the emergence of the modern civil rights movement—which most people assume is the origin of rights talk—many contain novel legal arguments, including expansive demands for new entitlements that went beyond what authorities had regarded as legitimate or required by law. Lovell demonstrates that rights talk is more malleable and less constraining than is generally believed. Americans, he shows, are capable of deploying idealized legal claims as a rhetorical tool for expressing their aspirations for a more just society while retaining a realistic understanding that the law often falls short of its own ideals.
