Why not every man? : African Americans and civil disobedience in the quest for the dream / George Hendrick, Willene Hendrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hendrick, George.

Contributor:

Hendrick, Willene, 1928-2010.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862--Political and social views.

Thoreau, Henry David.

Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948--Political and social views.

Gandhi.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968--Political and social views.

King, Martin Luther.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968.

Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.

African Americans--Civil rights--History.

African Americans.

African Americans--Civil rights.

History.

Civil disobedience--United States--History.

Civil disobedience.

Civil rights movements--United States--History.

Civil rights movements.

Slavery--United States--History.

Slavery.

Political and social views.

United States.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

246 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, [2005]

Summary:

The record of civil disobedience by African Americans, which George and Willene Hendrick recount in Why Not Every Man?, begins soon after slaves were brought legally to the American colonies: they began to run away. Through the years of the abolitionists, the struggle against the Fugitive Slave Act, the Emancipation, opposition to Jim Crow laws, legalized segregation, and the emergence of the civil rights movement, blacks continued the largely peaceful protest of their inequality and lack of freedom.

The Hendricks illustrate this protest with carefully chosen and often forgotten episodes that convey the atmosphere and ideas of contemporary events throughout American history. Still more important, they trace the origins and progress of the idea of civil disobedience-how it was first suggested in America by Henry David Thoreau, and how it crossed oceans to influence Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose thinking in turn attracted a young divinity student named Martin Luther King, Jr. The impact of this idea and the strategies connected to it was to be profound, forming a central tenet in Dr. King's movement against segregation and for the civil rights of black Americans.

Contents:

Introduction: Why Not Every Man? 3

I Slavery and Civil Disobedience from Colonial Times to 1830 13

II Abolitionists, 1830-1861 34

III Civil Disobedience and Jim Crow Railroad Cars 53

IV Danger: "Have Top Eye Open" 73

V From the Civil War Through Reconstruction: The End of Slavery 109

VI Thoreau's Essay Travels Across the Oceans to Gandhi 129

VII The Walls of Segregation Go Up Once More 159

VIII "Trumpets Begin to Sound": Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Beginnings of the Civil Disobedience Movement 176

IX A Better Day 205.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-228) and index.

ISBN:

1566636094

1566636450

OCLC:

57041236