Includes bibliographical references (p. 559-620) and index.
Summary
The civil rights movement that loomed over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down, from a ludicrous attempt to organize black workers with a stage production of Pushkin--in Russian--to the courageous fight of striking workers against police and corporate violence in Gastonia in 1929. Historian Gilmore shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights.--From publisher description.
Contents
Jim Crow meets Karl Marx -- Raising the red flag in the South -- From the Great Depression to the great terror -- The Nazis and Dixie -- Moving left from Chapel Hill to Cape Town -- Imagining integration -- Explosives in democracy's arsenal -- Guerrillas in the good war -- Cold War casualties.
