American Congo : the African American freedom struggle in the Delta / Nan Elizabeth Woodruff.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth, 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Civil rights--Mississippi--Delta (Region)--History--20th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Civil rights--Arkansas--Arkansas Delta--History--20th century.

Sharecroppers--Mississippi--Delta (Region)--Social conditions--20th century.

Sharecroppers.

Sharecroppers--Arkansas--Arkansas Delta--Social conditions--20th century.

Civil rights movements--Mississippi--Delta (Region)--History--20th century.

Civil rights movements.

Civil rights movements--Arkansas--Arkansas Delta--History--20th century.

Plantation life--Mississippi--Delta (Region)--History--20th century.

Plantation life.

Plantation life--Arkansas--Arkansas Delta--History--20th century.

Delta (Miss. : Region)--Race relations.

Delta (Miss. : Region).

Arkansas Delta (Ark.)--Race relations.

Arkansas Delta (Ark.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (289 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is the story of how rural black people struggled against the oppressive sharecropping system of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during the first half of the twentieth century. Delta planters, aided by local law enforcement, engaged in peonage, murder, theft, and disfranchisement. As individuals and through collective struggle, black men and women fought back, demanding a just return for their crops and laying claim to a democratic vision of citizenship. Nan Woodruff shows how the freedom fighters of the 1960s would draw on this half-century tradition of protest, thus expanding our standard notions of the civil rights movement and illuminating a neglected but significant slice of the American black experience.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1 The Forging of the Alluvial Empire

2 Tensions of Empire

3 The Killing Fields

4 The Black People's Burden

5 Revolt against Mean Things

6 A War within a War

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-268) and index.

ISBN:

9780674045330

0674045335

OCLC:

605910920