How free is free ? : the long death of Jim Crow / Leon F. Litwack.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Litwack, Leon F., author.

Series:

The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Civil rights--Southern States--History.

African Americans.

African Americans--Segregation--Southern States--History.

African Americans--Southern States--Social conditions.

Southern States--Race relations.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, [2009]

Summary:

In 1985, a black veteran of the civil rights movement offered a bleak vision of a long and troubled struggle. For more than a century, black southerners learned to live with betrayed expectations, diminishing prospects, and devastated aspirations. Their odyssey includes some of the most appalling examples of terrorism, violence, and dehumanization in the history of this nation. But, as Leon Litwack graphically demonstrates, it is at the same time an odyssey of resilience and resistance defined by day-to-day acts of protest: the fight for justice poignantly recorded in the stories, songs, images, and movements of a people trying to be heard.For black men and women, the question is: how free is free? Despite two major efforts to reconstruct race relations, injustices remain. From the height of Jim Crow to the early twenty-first century, struggles over racism persist despite court decisions and legislation. Few indignities were more pronounced than the World War II denial of basic rights and privileges to those responding to the call to make the world safe for democratic values-values that they themselves did not enjoy. And even the civil rights movement promise to redeem America was frustrated by change that was often more symbolic than real.Although a painful history to confront, Litwack's book inspires as it probes the enduring story of racial inequality and the ongoing fight for freedom in black America with power and grace.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Chapter 1. High Water Everywhere

Chapter 2. Never Turn Back

Chapter 3. Fight the Power

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674261648

067426164X

9780674261631

0674261631

OCLC:

1035614391