Search results for ""Author Cynthia Griggs Fleming""

On March 7, 1965, voting rights demonstrators were brutally beaten as they crossed the Edmund Petis bridge in Selma, Alabama. One of the most-publicized incidents of the civil rights campaign, images from that day have been seared into the nation's consciousness. Yet little has been written about the civil rights events in the surrounding counties, the vast sections of the rural south. Cynthia Griggs Fleming addresses this gap by bringing to light the struggle for equality of the citizens of Wilcox County, Alabama. Although right next door to Selma, their story has been largely ignored. Through the eyes of the residents of the county, Fleming relates a struggle punctuated by cowardice and courage, audacity and timidity, fear and foolishness. And, in the end, the entrenched power structure refused to yield and the county remains segregated to this day. Personal and compelling, In the Shadow of Selma is essential reading for everyone interested in the continuing struggle for civil rights in the United States.

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Barack Obama's presidential victory demonstrated unprecedented racial progress on a national level. Not since the civil rights legislation of the 1960s has the United States seen such remarkable advances. During Obama's historic campaign, however, prominent African Americans voiced concern about his candidacy, demonstrating a divided agenda among black political leaders. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. changed perceptions about the nature of African American leadership. In Yes We Did?, Cynthia Fleming examines the expansion of black leadership from grassroots to the national arena, beginning with Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois and progressing through contemporary leaders including Harold Ford Jr., Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Barack Obama. She emphasizes socioeconomic status, female black leadership, media influence, black conservatism, and generational conflict. Fleming had unprecedented access to a wide range of activists, including Carol Mosley Braun, Al Sharpton, and John Hope Franklin. She deftly maps the history of black leadership in America, illuminating both lingering disadvantages and obstacles that developed after the civil rights movement. Among those interviewed were community activists and scholars, as well as former freedom riders, sit-in activists, and others who were intimately involved in the civil rights struggle and close to Dr. King. Their personal accounts reflect the diverse viewpoints of the black community and offer a new understanding of the history of African American leadership, its current status, and its uncertain future.

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