Before Brown

by Feldman, Glenn; Feldman, Glenn; Sullivan, Patricia; Arsenault, Raymond (CON); Beito, David T. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780817351342
• ISBN10: 0817351345
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

Before Browndetails the ferment in civil rights that took place across the South before the momentous Brown vs. Board of Educationdecision in 1954. This collection refutes the notion that the movement began with the Supreme Court decision, and suggests, rather, that the movement originated in the 1930s and earlier, spurred by the Great Depression and, later, World War IIevents that would radically shape the course of politics in the South and the nation into the next century. This work explores the growth of the movement through its various manifestationsthe activities of politicians, civil rights leaders, religious figures, labor unionists, and grass-roots activiststhroughout the 1940s and 1950s. It discusses the critical leadership roles played by women and offers a new perspective on the relationship between the NAACP and the Communist Party. Before Brownshows clearly that, as the drive toward racial equality advanced and national political attitudes shifted, the validity of white supremacy came increasingly into question. Institutionalized racism in the South had always offered white citizens material advantages by preserving their economic superiority and making them feel part of a privileged class. When these rewards were threatened by the civil rights movement, a white backlash occurred. "A valuable and timely volume . . . particularly welcome for the emphasis it places on the churches, on white women, and on returning black and white veterans, groups whose postwar role has been too long ignored." Tony Badger, author of The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940and editor of, with Brian Ward, The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement Glenn Feldmanis Associate Professor of Business in the Center for Labor Education and Research at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949. Patricia Sullivanis Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era.

Author Biography

Glenn Feldman is Associate Professor of Business in the Center for Labor Education and Research at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949.  Patricia Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Foreword	xi
Patricia Sullivan
Prologue	1	(20)
Glenn Feldman
1. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow": CORE and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation	21	(47)
Raymond Arsenault
2. T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954	68	(28)
David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito
3. "Blood on Your Hands": White Southerners' Criticism of Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II	96	(20)
Pamela Tyler
4. "City Mothers": Dorothy Tilly, Georgia Methodist Women, and Black Civil Rights	116	(28)
Andrew M. Manis
5. Louisiana: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1940-1954	144	(26)
Adam Fairclough
6. Communism, Anti-Communism, and Massive Resistance: The Civil Rights Congress in Southern Perspective	170	(28)
Sarah Hart Brown
7. E.D. Nixon and the White Supremacists: Civil Rights in Montgomery	198	(24)
John White
8. "Flag-bearers for Integration and Justice": Local Civil Rights Groups in the South, 1940-1954	222	(16)
John A. Salmond
9. Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II	238	(30)
Jennifer E. Brooks
Epilogue: Ugly Roots: Race, Emotion, and the Rise of the Modern Republican Party in Alabama and the South	268	(43)
Glenn Feldman
Notes	311	(84)
Contributors	395	(4)
Index	399