Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers

Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers PDF Author: Jim Dann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781926824871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In June 1964, courageous young civil rights workers risked their lives in the face of violence, intimidation, illegal arrests, and racism to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. With a firsthand account of the details and thoughtful descriptions of key people on the front lines, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Charles McLaurin, John Harris, Irene McGruder, and many more, author Jim Dann brings that historic period back to life. He places those 15 months in Mississippi--known as Freedom Summer--in the overall history of the struggle of African Americans for freedom, equality, and democratic rights in the South, the country, and throughout the world. Fraught with lessons drawn from those experiences, Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers is a valuable contribution to understanding and advancing civil rights struggles in addition to being a fascinating and engrossing story of a pivotal moment in the mid-20th-century United States.

Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers

Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers PDF Author: Jim Dann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781926824871
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
In June 1964, courageous young civil rights workers risked their lives in the face of violence, intimidation, illegal arrests, and racism to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. With a firsthand account of the details and thoughtful descriptions of key people on the front lines, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Charles McLaurin, John Harris, Irene McGruder, and many more, author Jim Dann brings that historic period back to life. He places those 15 months in Mississippi--known as Freedom Summer--in the overall history of the struggle of African Americans for freedom, equality, and democratic rights in the South, the country, and throughout the world. Fraught with lessons drawn from those experiences, Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers is a valuable contribution to understanding and advancing civil rights struggles in addition to being a fascinating and engrossing story of a pivotal moment in the mid-20th-century United States.

Walk with Me

Walk with Me PDF Author: Kate Clifford Larson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190096845
Category : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Few figures embody the physical courage, unstinting sacrifice, and inspired heroism behind the Civil Rights movement more than Fannie Lou Hamer. For millions hers was the voice that made "This Little Light of Mine" an anthem. Her impassioned rhetoric electrified audiences. At the DemocraticConvention in 1964, Hamer's televised speech took not just Democrats but the entire nation to task for abetting racial injustice, searing the conscience of everyone who heard it. Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, Hamer was the 20th child of Black sharecroppers and raised in a world in whichracism, poverty, and injustice permeated the cotton fields. As the Civil Rights Movement began to emerge during the 1950s, she was struggling to make a living with her husband on lands that her forebears had cleared, ploughed, and harvested for generations. When a white doctor sterilized her withouther permission in 1961, Hamer took her destiny into her own hands.Bestselling biographer Kate Clifford Larson offers the first account of Hamer's life for a general audience, capturing and illuminating what made Hamer the electrifying force that she became when she walked onto stages across the country during the 1960s and until her death in 1977. Walk with Medoes justice to the full force of Hamer's activism and example. Based on new sources, including recently opened FBI files and Oval Office transcripts, the biography features interviews with some of the people closest to Hamer and conversations with Civil Rights leaders who fought alongside her.Larson's biography will become the standard account of an extraordinary life.

The Times They Were a-Changin'

The Times They Were a-Changin' PDF Author: Robert S McElvaine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1950994120
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 581

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Book Description
An award-winning historian on the transformative year in the sixties that continues to reverberate in our lives and politics—for readers of Heather Cox Richardson. If 1968 marked a turning point in a pivotal decade, 1964—or rather, the long 1964, from JFK’s assassination in November 1963 to mid-1965—was the time when the sixties truly arrived. It was then that the United States began a radical shift toward a much more inclusive definition of “American,” with a greater degree of equality and a government actively involved in social and economic improvement. It was a radical shift accompanied by a cultural revolution. The same month Bob Dylan released his iconic ballad “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced his War on Poverty. Spurred by the civil rights movement and a generation pushing for change, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act were passed during this period. This was a time of competing definitions of freedom. Freedom from racism, freedom from poverty. White youth sought freedoms they associated with black culture, captured imperfectly in the phrase “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.” Along with freedom from racist oppression, black Americans sought the opportunities associated with the white middle class: “white freedom.” Women challenged rigid gender roles. And in response to these freedoms, the changing mores, and youth culture, the contrary impulse found political expression in such figures as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, proponents of what was presented as freedom from government interference. Meanwhile, a nonevent in the Tonkin Gulf would accelerate the nation's plunge into the Vietnam tragedy. In narrating 1964’s moment of reckoning, when American identity began to be reimagined, McElvaine ties those past battles to their legacy today. Throughout, he captures the changing consciousness of the period through its vibrant music, film, literature, and personalities.

John Jones Pettus, Mississippi fire-eater

John Jones Pettus, Mississippi fire-eater PDF Author: Robert W. Dubay
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781617033537
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960-1964

The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960-1964 PDF Author: James P. Marshall
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807168750
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
In the early 1960s, civil rights activists and the Kennedy administration engaged in parallel, though not always complementary, efforts to overcome Mississippi’s extreme opposition to racial desegregation. In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960–1964, James P. Marshall uncovers this history through primary source documents that explore the legal and political strategies of the federal government, follows the administration’s changing and sometimes contentious relationship with civil rights organizations, and reveals the tactics used by local and state entities in Mississippi to stem the advancement of racial equality. A historian and longtime civil rights activist, Marshall collects a vast array of documents from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and excerpts from his own 1960s interviews with leading figures in the movement for racial justice. This volume tracks early forms of resistance to racial parity adopted by the White Citizens’ Councils and chapters of the Ku Klux Klan at the local level as well as by Mississippi congressmen and other elected officials who used both legal obstructionism and extra-legal actions to block efforts meant to promote integration. Quoting from interviews and correspondence among the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members, government officials, and other constituents of the Democratic Party, Marshall also explores decisions about voter registration drives and freedom rides as well as formal efforts by the Kennedy administration—including everything from minority hiring initiatives to federal litigation and party platform changes—to exert pressure on Mississippi to end segregation. Through a carefully curated selection of letters, interviews, government records, and legal documents, The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960–1964 sheds new light on the struggle to advance racial justice for African Americans living in the Magnolia State.

The War on Poverty in Mississippi

The War on Poverty in Mississippi PDF Author: Emma J. Folwell
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496827430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty instigated a ferocious backlash in Mississippi. Federally funded programs—the embodiment of 1960s liberalism—directly clashed with Mississippi’s closed society. From 1965 to 1973, opposing forces transformed the state. In this state-level history of the war on poverty, Emma J. Folwell traces the attempts of white and black Mississippians to address the state’s dire economic circumstances through antipoverty programs. At times, the war on poverty became a powerful tool for black empowerment. But more often, antipoverty programs served as a potent catalyst of white resistance to black advancement. After the momentous events of 1964, both black activism and white opposition to black empowerment evolved due to these federal efforts. White Mississippians deployed massive resistance in part to stifle any black economic empowerment, twisting antipoverty programs into tools to marginalize black political power. Folwell uncovers how the grassroots war against the war on poverty laid the foundation for the fight against 1960s liberalism, as Mississippi became a national model for stonewalling social change. As Folwell indicates, many white Mississippians hardwired elements of massive resistance into the political, economic, and social structure. Meanwhile, they abandoned the Democratic Party and honed the state’s Republican Party, spurred by a new conservatism.

First on the Scene

First on the Scene PDF Author: Walter Simpson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781984343727
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
In 1972 when a man walked into the Greenville, Mississippi fire department reporting to work, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about this event, except that for the very first time in the history of the department, the man walking in was Black. This memoir follows the author's journey towards becoming the first Black firefighter on the scene. In an era where bigotry, injustice and discrimination reigned supreme, this book documents his life story from childhood to his fight for recognition in the heart of the Delta.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Revolutionary Practical Theology

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Revolutionary Practical Theology PDF Author: Karen D. Crozier
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004438076
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
In Fannie Lou Hamer’s Revolutionary Practical Theology Crozier presents the civil and human rights life and legacy of Hamer through the lens of practical theology.

Black Bodies in the River

Black Bodies in the River PDF Author: Davis W. Houck
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496840828
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Nearly sixty years after Freedom Summer, its events—especially the lynching of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Mickey Schwerner—stand out as a critical episode of the civil rights movement. The infamous deaths of these activists dominate not just the history but also the public memory of the Mississippi Summer Project. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, movement veterans challenged this central narrative with the shocking claim that during the search for Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, the FBI and other law enforcement personnel discovered many unidentified Black bodies in Mississippi’s swamps, rivers, and bayous. This claim has evolved in subsequent years as activists, journalists, filmmakers, and scholars have continued to repeat it, and the number of supposed Black bodies—never identified—has grown from five to more than two dozen. In Black Bodies in the River: Searching for Freedom Summer, author Davis W. Houck sets out to answer two questions: Were Black bodies discovered that summer? And why has the shocking claim only grown in the past several decades—despite evidence to the contrary? In other words, what rhetorical work does the Black bodies claim do, and with what audiences? Houck’s story begins in the murky backwaters of the Mississippi River and the discovery of the bodies of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, murdered on May 2, 1964, by the Ku Klux Klan. He pivots next to the Council of Federated Organization’s voter registration efforts in Mississippi leading up to Freedom Summer. He considers the extent to which violence generally and expectations about interracial violence, in particular, serves as a critical context for the strategy and rhetoric of the Summer Project. Houck then interrogates the unnamed-Black-bodies claim from a historical and rhetorical perspective, illustrating that the historicity of the bodies in question is perhaps less the point than the critique of who we remember from that summer and how we remember them. Houck examines how different memory texts—filmic, landscape, presidential speech, and museums—function both to bolster and question the centrality of murdered white men in the legacy of Freedom Summer.

This Little Light of Mine

This Little Light of Mine PDF Author: Kay Mills
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813191829
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
The award-winning biography of black civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer