The American Civil Rights Movement 18651950
Black Agency and People of Good Will
By (author) Russell Brooker
Publication date:
07 December 2016Length of book:
364 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739179925
The American Civil Rights Movement 1865–1950 is a history of the African American struggle for freedom and equality from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. It synthesizes the disparate black movements, explaining consistent themes and controversies during those years. The main focus is on the black activists who led the movement and the white people who supported them. The principal theme is that African American agency propelled the progress and that whites often helped. Even whites who were not sympathetic to black demands were useful, often because it was to their advantage to act as black allies. Even white opponents could be coerced into cooperation or, at least, non-opposition. White people of good will with shallow understanding were frustrating, but they were sometimes useful. Even if they did not work for black rights, they did not work against them, and sometimes helped because they had no better options.
Until now, the history of the African American movement from 1865 to 1950 has not been covered as one coherent story. There have been many histories of African Americans that have treated the subject in one chapter or part of a chapter, and several excellent books have concentrated on a specific time period, such as Reconstruction or World War II. Other books have focused on one aspect of the time, such as lynching or the nature of Jim Crow. This is the first book to synthesize the history of the movement in a coherent whole.
Until now, the history of the African American movement from 1865 to 1950 has not been covered as one coherent story. There have been many histories of African Americans that have treated the subject in one chapter or part of a chapter, and several excellent books have concentrated on a specific time period, such as Reconstruction or World War II. Other books have focused on one aspect of the time, such as lynching or the nature of Jim Crow. This is the first book to synthesize the history of the movement in a coherent whole.
For decades, historians of the civil rights movement have pushed the origins of the struggle for racial justice to well before the Brown decision of 1954. Brooker (political science, Alverno College) argues that the beginnings of activism began shortly after the end of Reconstruction, when the US government failed to uphold the 14th and 15th amendments for black Americans. For Brooker, the key to this activism was the decision of people of good will, black and white, to make the reality conform to the promise of the US. A decade before the creation of the NAACP, there had been attempts to organize resistance from oppression, including a moment when poor white and black southern farmers worked together to overcome their shared exploitation by rich white landowners. Although this effort failed, the experience provided some evidence that organizing at the community level, using litigation, and pressuring the federal government might produce a more equitable society. Brooker notes that the real agents of change were the victims of oppression, black Americans. As a work of synthesis, the book provides a timely introduction to what happens when people of good will act upon their conscience. Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries.