Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

Download or read book Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 written by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-08-10 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remarkable…an eye-opening book [on] the freedom struggle that changed the South, the nation, and the world." —Washington Post 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.