Description
Book SynopsisScholars continue to differ over when African Americans' struggle for civil rights beganas well as whether it has actually ended. In the long-awaited volume in our illustrious American History Series, Daniel Aldridge presents a critical and analytical study of the many different leaders and organizations, with special attention to the largely unsung ones whom most student readers never hear about, whose efforts eventually overturned the South's legal and extralegal system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow, radically transforming society in that blacks fully became part of the American nation. Regardless of one's point of view, no one can dispute that African Americans' long but successful quest for civil rights stands as one of the defining elements in United States history.
Becoming American makes ideal reading for courses on the history of the Civil Rights movement as well as a superb supplement to survey courses in African American and United States history.
Trade Review"[A] compelling and well-written resource to add to any American history survey course and a thoughtful introduction to a contemporary study of African American history from the Civil War to the mid-1970s." (
Teaching History, Fall 2011)
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments xi
CHAPTER ONE: Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Origins of the African American Quest for Civil Rights 1
The Civil War and Emancipation 1
The Origins of Reconstruction 7
Radical Reconstruction 17
The End of Reconstruction 28
African American Responses to the End of Reconstruction 35
CHAPTER TWO: The New Black Leadership of the Post-Reconstruction Era, 1890—1910 41
Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching 41
Disfranchisement and the Rise of Jim Crow 46
The Age of Booker T. Washington 50
W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise of the Radicals 65
CHAPTER THREE: From the Margins to the Mainstream, 1910—1930 74
The Great Migration 74
The Origins of the NAACP 78
African Americans and World War I 86
A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, and the New Black Politics of the 1920s 96
CHAPTER FOUR: Civil Rights in the New Deal Era, 1930—1945 114
The Scottsboro Case, African Americans, and the Communist Party 114
The New Generation of the NAACP 124
African Americans, the New Deal, and the Democratic Party 131
The National Negro Congress and the March on Washington Movement 147
Civil Rights during World War II 159
CHAPTER FIVE: A Shifting of the Tide: Civil Rights in Postwar America, 1945—1955 169
Black Resistance and Racial Liberation 169
The Journey of Reconciliation and the Origins of Nonviolent Direct Action 177
The Cold War, the NAACP, and the 1948 Election 180
Race, Culture, and Society in Postwar America 192
The Brown Decision 196
CHAPTER SIX: The Civil Rights Revolution Begins, 1955—1962 208
The Montgomery Bus Boycott 208
School Desegragation and the White Backlash 220
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference 226
The Sit-In Movement and the Origins of SNCC 228
The Freedom Rides and the Kennedy Administration 234
The Albany Defeat 243
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Civil Rights Revolution Triumphs, 1963—1965 252
The Birmingham Campaign 252
The March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act 263
Mississippi Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 271
Selma and the Voting Rights Act 284
CHAPTER EIGHT: Black Power and the End of the Civil Rights Era 293
Urban Riots and Inner City Poverty 293
Malcolm X and the Resurgence of Black Nationalist Populism 299
Black Power and the Decline of SNCC 306
The Center Cannot Hold: The Last Years of Martin Luther King 312
Things Fall Apart: The End of the Civil Right Era 320
CONCLUSION THOUGHTS 332
Bibliographical Essay 342
Index 354
Photographs follow pages 73 and 207
