Related Books
Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South
The civil rights movement was also a struggle for economic justice, one that until now has not had its own history. Sharing the Prize demonstrates the significant material gains black southerners made―in improved job opportunities, quality of education, and health care―from the 1960s to the 1970s and beyond. Because black advances did not come at the expense of southern whites, Gavin Wright argues, the civil rights struggle was that rarest of social revolutions: one that benefits both sides.
Charles E. Cobb, Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
Visiting Martin Luther King, Jr. at the peak of the civil rights movement, the journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self-defense, " King assured him. One of King's advisors remembered the reverend's home as "an arsenal." Like King, many nonviolent activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection-yet this crucial dimension of the civil rights struggle has been long ignored. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb, Jr. reveals how nonviolent activists and their allies kept the civil rights movement alive by bearing-and, when necessary, using-firearms. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these men and women were crucial to the movement's success, as were the weapons they carried. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the Southern Freedom Movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb offers a controversial examination of the vital role guns have played in securing American liberties.
Glenda Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950
The civil rights movement that looms over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This rich history of that early movement introduces us to a contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals who employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down. In a dramatic narrative Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore deftly shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights.
Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
This book tells the remarkable story of Robert F. Williams--one of the most influential black activists of the generation that toppled Jim Crow and forever altered the arc of American history. In the late 1950s, as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, Williams and his followers used machine guns, dynamite, and Molotov cocktails to confront Klan terrorists. Advocating "armed self-reliance" by blacks, Williams challenged not only white supremacists but also Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights establishment. Forced to flee during the 1960s to Cuba--where he broadcast "Radio Free Dixie," a program of black politics and music that could be heard as far away as Los Angeles and New York City--and then China, Williams remained a controversial figure for the rest of his life.
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision
In this deeply researched biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Ransby shows Baker to be a complex figure whose radical, democratic worldview, commitment to empowering the black poor, and emphasis on group-centered, grassroots leadership set her apart from most of her political contemporaries. Beyond documenting an extraordinary life, the book paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide across the twentieth century.
Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
This momentous work offers a groundbreaking history of the early civil rights movement in the South with new material that situates the book in the context of subsequent movement literature.
Kimberly K. Little, You Must Be from the North: Southern White Women In The Memphis Civil Rights Movement
"You must be from the North," was a common, derogatory reaction to the activities of white women throughout the South, well-meaning wives and mothers who joined together to improve schools or local sanitation but found their efforts decried as more troublesome civil rights agitation. You Must Be from the North: Southern White Women in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement focuses on a generation of white women in Memphis, Tennessee, born between the two World Wars and typically omitted from the history of the civil rights movement. The women for the most part did not jeopardize their lives by participating alongside black activists in sit-ins and freedom rides. Instead, they began their journey into civil rights activism as a result of their commitment to traditional female roles through such organizations as the Junior League. What originated as a way to do charitable work, however, evolved into more substantive political action. While involvement with groups devoted to feeding school-children and expanding Bible study sessions seemed benign, these white women's growing awareness of racial disparities in Memphis and elsewhere caused them to question the South's hierarchies in ways many of their peers did not. Ultimately, they found themselves challenging segregation more directly, found themselves ostracized as a result, and discovered they were often distrusted by a justifiably suspicious black community. Their newly discovered commitment to civil rights contributed to the success of the city's sanitation workers' strike of 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death during the strike resonated so deeply that for many of these women it became a defining moment. In the long term, these women proved to be a persistent and progressive influence upon the attitudes of the white population of Memphis, and particularly on the city's elite.
One of the longstanding debates within the history of the Civil Rights Movement is whether to associate its origins with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott or earlier, particularly with more radical protests in the early 20th century, and whether to claim it ended in the mid or late 1960s (with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 or Dr. King's assassination in 1968). The sources linked to on this page focus on the classic period of the 1950s and 1960s, but they also include information about earlier and later work.
See Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past" vs Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Long, "The 'Long Movement' as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies.
Note: links with a lock symbol next to them require IU authentication.
Freely Available Websites
- Behind the Veil
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The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. - Civil Rights Digital LibraryThe struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s is among the most far-reaching social movements in the nation's history, and it represents a crucial step in the evolution of American democracy. The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
- Civil Rights History Project
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"The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, and musicians, among others. The video recordings of their recollections cover a wide range of topics within the freedom struggle, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the Freedom Rides (1961), the Albany Movement (1961), the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), the Poor People’s Campaign (1968), sit-ins, and voter registration drives in the South. The murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement, looms large in the memories of many movement veterans." - Civil Rights Resource GuideThe digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material related to civil rights, including photographs, documents, and sound recordings. This guide compiles links to civil-rights resources throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on civil rights and a bibliography containing selections for both general and younger readers.
- SNCC Digital GatewayThis documentary website tells the story of how young activists in SNCC united with local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement for change that empowered the Black community and transformed the nation. The SNCC Digital Gateway portrays how SNCC, alongside thousands of local Black residents, worked for Black people to take control of their political and economic lives. It also unveils the inner workings of SNCC as an organization, examining how it coordinated sit-ins and freedom schools, voter registration and economic cooperatives, anti-draft protests and international solidarity struggles.
- MLK Research and Education InstituteThe King Institute provides access to thousands of documents, photographs, and publications about the modern African American Freedom Struggle. Use this page to navigate to resources about King's life and work.
Resources Requiring IUB Authentication
- African American Communities
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This resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
- Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century
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The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century consists of four modules: two modules of Federal Government Records, and two modules of Organizational Records and Personal Papers, offering documentation and a variety of perspectives on the 20th-century fight for freedom.
- Black Liberation Army and the Program of Armed Struggle
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Primary source documents related to the Black Liberation Army (BLA), an underground, black nationalist-Marxist organization that operated from 1970 to 1981.
- Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman
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Primary source documents related to voting rights activist and civil rights leader, Fannie Lou Hamer.
- Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
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Contains reproductions of hundreds of FBI files documenting the federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution to which Black Americans of all political persuasions were subjected.
- HistoryMakers Digital Archive
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African American oral history video collection.
- Liberation Movement in Africa and African America
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FBI surveillance files: African Liberation Support Committee and All African People's Revolutionary Party. - NAACP Papers
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Digital access to the NAACP archive. Includes internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. The NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond. - Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement
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Collection consists of materials from the years 1913 through 1998 that document African American author and activist Amiri Baraka. Includes poetry, organizational records, print publications, articles, plays, speeches, personal correspondence, oral histories, and personal records. The materials cover Baraka's involvement in the politics in Newark, N.J. and in Black Power movement organizations such as the Congress of African People, the National Black Conference movement, the Black Women's United Front. Later materials document Baraka's increasing involvement in Marxism.
- Sixties: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1960-1974
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Primary resources related to the history, culture, and politics of the American 1960s.
