Carry it on
Carry it on

Author: Susan Youngblood Ashmore

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 0820330515

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Carry It On is an in-depth study of how the local struggle for equality in Alabama fared in the wake of new federal laws--the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Susan Youngblood Ashmore provides a sharper definition to changes set in motion by the fall of legal segregation. She focuses her detailed story on the Alabama Black Belt and on the local projects funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the federal agency that supported programs in a variety of cities and towns in Alabama. Black Belt activists who used OEO funds understood that the structural underpinnings of poverty were key components of white supremacy, says Ashmore. They were motivated not only to end poverty but also to force local governments to comply with new federal legislation aimed at achieving racial equality on a number of fronts. Ashmore looks closely at the interactions among local activists, elected officials, businesspeople, landowners, bureaucrats, and others who were involved in or affected by OEO projects. Carry It On offers a nuanced picture of the OEO, an agency too broadly criticized; a new look at the rise of southern Black Power; and a compelling portrait of local citizens struggling for control over their own lives. Ashmore provides a more complete understanding of how southerners worked to define for themselves how freedom would come during the years shaped by the civil rights movement and the war on poverty.

Little Zion
Little Zion

Author: Shelly O'Foran

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-01-05

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0807876666

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The arson attacks in early 2006 on a number of small Baptist churches in rural Alabama recalled the rash of burnings at dozens of predominantly black houses of worship in the South during the mid-1990s. One of the churches struck by probable arson in 1996 was Little Zion Baptist Church in Boligee, Alabama. This book draws on the voices and memories of church members to share a previously undocumented history of Little Zion, from its beginnings as a brush arbor around the time of emancipation, to its key role in the civil rights movement, to its burning and rebuilding with the help of volunteers from around the world. Folklorist Shelly O'Foran, a Quaker who went to Boligee as a volunteer in the church rebuilding effort, describes Little Zion as always having been much more than the building itself. She shows how the spiritual and social traditions that the residents of Boligee practice and teach their children have assured the continued vitality of the church and community. Through thoughtful fieldwork and presentation, Little Zion also explores the power of oral narrative to promote understanding between those inside and outside the church community. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, this volume is both a celebration of Little Zion's history and an invitation to share in its long life story.

You Can’t Eat Freedom
You Can’t Eat Freedom

Author: Greta de Jong

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-08-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1469629313

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Two revolutions roiled the rural South after the mid-1960s: the political revolution wrought by the passage of civil rights legislation, and the ongoing economic revolution brought about by increasing agricultural mechanization. Political empowerment for black southerners coincided with the transformation of southern agriculture and the displacement of thousands of former sharecroppers from the land. Focusing on the plantation regions of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, Greta de Jong analyzes how social justice activists responded to mass unemployment by lobbying political leaders, initiating antipoverty projects, and forming cooperative enterprises that fostered economic and political autonomy, efforts that encountered strong opposition from free market proponents who opposed government action to solve the crisis. Making clear the relationship between the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, this history of rural organizing shows how responses to labor displacement in the South shaped the experiences of other Americans who were affected by mass layoffs in the late twentieth century, shedding light on a debate that continues to reverberate today.