Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950The civil rights movement that loomed 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 contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down, from a ludicrous attempt to organize black workers with a stage production of Pushkin--in Russian--to the courageous fight of striking workers against police and corporate violence in Gastonia in 1929. 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. Little-known heroes abound in a book that will recast our understanding of the most important social movement in twentieth-century America. |
Contents
List of Illustrations | xi |
Sunset in Dixie | 1 |
Jim Crow Meets Karl Marx | 15 |
Copyright | |
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African Americans argued asked Atlanta Beal became began believed Bois called Chapel Hill City civil rights Collection color Committee Communism Communist Communist Party Conference Congress Court CPUSA Davis Defense equality Fascism fight force Fort-Whiteman Front Gastonia Graham Green Hall Herndon History Hope Howard Hughes International interracial Italy James Jews Jim Crow John Johnson joined July June Labor liberal Library lived lynching March Marxism Max Yergan meeting mill Moscow Movement NAACP Negro never North Carolina Odum Olive Stone organizer Party Paul Pauli Murray police political Press problem quoted Race racial radical Randolph Report RGASPI Scottsboro segregation Sept Smith social South Soviet strike thought tion told turned U.S. South Union United University wanted West white Southerners women workers World wrote York young