Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents a comprehensive study of Arkansas's racial legacy. From the Civil War to Reconstruction, the Redeemer period, Jim Crow, and the modern civil rights era to the present, ""Ruled by Race"" describes the ways that race has been at the center of much of the state's formation and image since its founding. Grif Stockley uses the work of published and unpublished historians and exhaustive primary source materials along with stories from authors as diverse as Maya Angelou and E. Lynn Harris to bring to life the voices of those who have both studied and lived the racial experience in Arkansas.Topics range from the well-known Little Rock Central High Crisis of 1957 to lesser-known events such as the Elaine Race Massacres of 1919 and the shocking yet sadly commonplace attitudes found in newspaper reports and speeches. Through the words of the most powerful Arkansans such as racist Arkansas Governor Jeff Davis (1901-1906) to the least powerful, including an unflinching look at the narratives of former slaves, readers will come away with increased awareness of the ways that race continues to affect where Arkansans live, send their children to school, work, travel, shop, spend leisure time, worship, and choose their friends and life partners.
Trade ReviewAn important and useful contribution to the literature on Arkansas history and to general readers elsewhere who see Arkansas as an important locus of Southern race relations over the past two centuries. Readers will find the book compelling because of how it sets race at the center of much of the state's formation and image since its founding. - Adam Green, author of Selling the Race: Culture and Community in Black Chicago, 1940-1955 and Time Longer than Rope: Studies in African American Activism: 1850-1950
