I've Got the Light of Freedom

I've Got the Light of Freedom

Author: Charles M. Payne

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 9780520207066

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This momentous work offers a groundbreaking history of the early civil rights movement in the South. Using wide-ranging archival work and extensive interviews with movement participants, Charles Payne uncovers a chapter of American social history forged locally, in places like Greenwood, Mississippi, where countless unsung African Americans risked their lives for the freedom struggle. The leaders were ordinary women and men--sharecroppers, domestics, high school students, beauticians, independent farmers--committed to organizing the civil rights struggle house by house, block by block, relationship by relationship. Payne brilliantly brings to life the tradition of grassroots African American activism, long practiced yet poorly understood. Payne overturns familiar ideas about community activism in the 1960s. The young organizers who were the engines of change in the state were not following any charismatic national leader. Far from being a complete break with the past, their work was based directly on the work of an older generation of activists, people like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry. These leaders set the standards of courage against which young organizers judged themselves; they served as models of activism that balanced humanism with militance. While historians have commonly portrayed the movement leadership as male, ministerial, and well-educated, Payne finds that organizers in Mississippi and elsewhere in the most dangerous parts of the South looked for leadership to working-class rural Blacks, and especially to women. Payne also finds that Black churches, typically portrayed as frontrunners in the civil rights struggle, were in fact late supporters of the movement.


Local People

Local People

Author: John Dittmer

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 9780252065071

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Traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people to establish basic human rights for all citizens of Mississippi


Thunder of Freedom

Thunder of Freedom

Author:

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0813140935

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The world's eyes were on Mississippi during the summer of 1964, when civil rights activists launched an ambitious African American voter registration project and were met with violent resistance from white supremacists. Sue (Lorenzi) Sojourner and her husband, Henry Lorenzi, arrived in Holmes County, Mississippi, in the wake of this historic time, known as Freedom Summer. From her arrival in September 1964 until her departure in 1969, Sojourner amassed an extensive collection of photographs, oral histories, and documents chronicling the dramatic events she witnessed. Thunder of Freedom weaves together Sojourner's interviews and photographs with accounts of her own experiences as an activist during the movement.


On the Road to Freedom

On the Road to Freedom

Author: Charles E. Cobb Jr.

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2008-01-15

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1616202262

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This in-depth look at the civil rights movement goes to the places where pioneers of the movement marched, sat-in at lunch counters, gathered in churches; where they spoke, taught, and organized; where they were arrested, where they lost their lives, and where they triumphed. Award-winning journalist Charles E. Cobb Jr., a former organizer and field secretary for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), knows the journey intimately. He guides us through Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, back to the real grassroots of the movement. He pays tribute not only to the men and women etched into our national memory but to local people whose seemingly small contributions made an impact. We go inside the organizations that framed the movement, travel on the "Freedom Rides" of 1961, and hear first-person accounts about the events that inspired Brown vs. Board of Education. An essential piece of American history, this is also a useful travel guide with maps, photographs, and sidebars of background history, newspaper coverage, and firsthand interviews.


A Companion to Post-1945 America

A Companion to Post-1945 America

Author: Jean-Christophe Agnew

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1405123192

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A Companion to Post-1945 America is an original collectionof 34 essays by key scholars on the history and historiography ofPost-1945 America. Covers society and culture, people and movements, politics andforeign policy Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every importantera and topic Includes book review section on essential readings


Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968

Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968

Author: Steven F. Lawson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Education

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 9780742551091

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No other book about the civil rights movement captures the drama and impact of the black struggle for equality better than Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Two of the most respected scholars of African-American history, Steven F. Lawson and Charles M. Payne, examine the individuals who made the movement a success, both at the highest level of government and in the grassroots trenches. Designed specifically for college and university courses in American history, this is the best introduction available to the glory and agony of these turbulent times. Carefully chosen primary documents augment each essay giving students the opportunity to interpret the historical record themselves and engage in meaningful discussion. In this revised and updated edition, Lawson and Payne have included additional analysis on the legacy of Martin Luther King and added important new documents.


The Autobiography of Medgar Evers

The Autobiography of Medgar Evers

Author: Myrlie Evers-Williams

Publisher: Civitas Books

Published: 2006-08-29

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0786722495

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On the evening of June 12, 1963 -- the day President John F. Kennedy gave his most impassioned speech about the need for interracial tolerance "Medgar Evers, the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed by an assassin's bullet in his driveway. The still-smoking gun -- bearing the fingerprints of Byron De La Beckwith, a staunch white supremacist -- was recovered moments later in some nearby bushes. Still, Beckwith remained free for over thirty years, until Evers's widow finally forced the Mississippi courts to bring him to justice. The Autobiography of Medgar Evers tells the full story of one the greatest leaders of the civil rights movement, bringing his achievement to life for a new generation. Although Evers's memory has remained a force in the civil rights movement, the legal battles surrounding his death have too often overshadowed the example and inspiration of his life. Myrlie Evers-Williams and Manning Marable have assembled the previously untouched cache of Medgar's personal documents, writings, and speeches. These remarkable pieces range from Medgar's monthly reports to the NAACP to his correspondence with luminaries of the time such as Robert Carter, General Counsel for the NAACP in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. Most important of all are the recollections of Myrlie Evers, combined with letters from her personal collection. These documents and memories form the backbone of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers a cohesive narrative detailing the rise and tragic death of a civil rights hero.


This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

Author: Charles E Cobb Jr.

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0465080952

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Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend's Montgomery, Alabama home as "an arsenal." Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to selfprotection -- yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing -- and, when necessary, using -- firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners in the regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement's success. Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom.


So the Heffners Left McComb

So the Heffners Left McComb

Author: Hodding Carter II

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2016-04-12

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1496807499

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On Saturday, September 5, 1964, the family of Albert W. "Red" Heffner Jr., a successful insurance agent, left their house at 202 Shannon Drive in McComb, Mississippi, where they had lived for ten years. They never returned. In the eyes of neighbors, their unforgiveable sin was to have spoken on several occasions with civil rights workers and to have invited two into their home. Consequently, the Heffners were subjected to a campaign of harassment, ostracism, and economic retaliation shocking to a white family who believed that they were respected community members. So the Heffners Left McComb, originally published in 1965 and reprinted now for the first time, is Greenville journalist Hodding Carter's account of the events that led to the Heffners' downfall. Historian Trent Brown, a McComb native, supplies a substantial introduction evaluating the book's significance. The Heffners' story demonstrates the forces of fear, conformity, communal pressure, and threats of retaliation that silenced so many white Mississippians during the 1950s and 1960s. Carter's book provides a valuable portrait of a family who was not choosing to make a stand, but merely extending humane hospitality. Yet the Heffners were systematically punished and driven into exile for what was perceived as treason against white apartheid.


Teach Freedom

Teach Freedom

Author: Charles M. Payne

Publisher:

Published: 2008-04-12

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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"This anthology is about those forms of education intended to help people think more critically about the social forces shaping their lives and think more confidently about their ability to react against those forces. Featuring articles by educator-activists, this collection explores the largely forgotten history of attempts by African Americans to use education as a tool of collective liberation. Together these contributions explore the variety of forms those attempts have taken, from the shadow of slavery to the contradictions of hip-hop." --Book Jacket.