Sunbelt Revolution

by Hyde, Samuel C., Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780813025773
• ISBN10: 081302577X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-24
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Florida

Summary

Sunbelt Revolution offers a historical account of the emergence in the 19th century of a national consciousness of social justice and racial inequality, identifying what may have been the first organized civil rights march in the United States. The book reveals that the burden of oppression involved more than just white masters and black victims, and demonstrates that activists sometimes struggled as much among themselves as they did against the powers of injustice. Linked by the theme of civil rights reform, the essays address such topics as the early days of the American Citizens Equal Rights Association; early efforts to challenge segregation on public transportation; women's efforts at improving the daily life of black Montgomery citizens; the multiracial nature of the longshoremen's union along the Gulf Coast; philosophical differences separating local activists and national civil rights organizations; and the Biloxi beach riot and the origins of the civil rights movement on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. They highlight the forgotten or overlooked efforts of

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: The Challenges and Expectations of Social Change in the Gulf South, 1866--2000	1	(20)
Samuel C. Hyde Jr.
Part I. Regional Initiatives, National Implications
``Damned Sons of Bitches'': The First Demonstrations for Black Civil Rights in the Gulf South	21	(21)
James G. Hollandsworth
Rodolphe Lucien Desdunes: Forgotten Organizer of the Plessy Protest	42	(31)
Joseph Logsdon
Lawrence Powell
Part II. Black, Brown, and White: Confronting and Accommodating Jim Crow
Accommodating Activism: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and Robert Chapman Judkins, Workers That Needeth Not Be Ashamed, 1883-1920	73	(29)
Houston B. Roberson
Working for American Rights: Black, White, and Mexican American Dockworkers in Texas during the Great Depression	102	(31)
Rebecca Montes
A History of Florida's White Primary	133	(20)
Gary R. Mormino
Part III. Forward toward an Elusive Goal
One Brick at a Time: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, Nonviolent Direct Action, and the Development of a National Civil Rights Movement	153	(37)
Raymond Arsenault
The Tallahassee Bus Boycott	190	(20)
Gregory B. Padgett
Local Leadership, the Biloxi Beach Riot, and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 1959-1964	210	(24)
James Patterson Smith
John McKeithen, Integration, and the Louisiana State Police: A Work in Progress	234	(31)
Roman J. Heleniak
Contributors	265	(2)
Index	267