Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes PDF Author: Pamela Tyler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes is a narrative history of organized, politically active white women in twentieth-century New Orleans. Viewing their involvement as a link between pre-1920s progressivism and 1960s feminism. Pamela Tyler tells how these upper- and middle-class women sought and exercised power at the state and local levels through lobbying, fund-raising, endorsements, watchdog activities, volunteer work, voting, and candidacy. Beginning with an overview of New Orleans politics in the early twentieth century, Tyler looks at the presuffrage political activities of New Orleans women and discusses the relatively dormant state of women's political life in New Orleans in the 1920s. From there she traces, in the careers of the city's women leaders, a shift away from humanitarian, social justice issues toward politics. Subsequent chapters focus on Hilda Phelps Hammond and the Louisiana Women's Committee's crusade against Huey Long's political machine in the 1930s, Martha Gilmore Robinson and the nonpartisan activities of the Woman Citizens' Union and the League of Women Voters in the 1930s and 1940s, and the partisanship and direct political influence of the Independent Women's Organization in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters consider Martha Gilmore Robinson's unsuccessful bid for a seat on the New Orleans city council in 1954 and the civil rights activities in the 1950s and 1960s of Urban League stalwart Rosa Freeman Keller, now judged to be the most effective white liberal of her time in New Orleans. Throughout, Tyler places her subjects and their stories in the context of such national trends and events as the Depression. World War II, McCarthyism, and the civil rightsmovement. She discusses, for example, the New Orleans League of Women Voters' purge of suspected Communist sympathizers in 1947-48 and the involvement of a coterie of women's organizations in community efforts during the public school integration crisis from 1959 to 1961. Tyler also discusses the insularity of New Orleans society, the limiting effects of race- and class-consciousness on many of her subjects, and the postwar decline in the domination by elites of the women's political scene in New Orleans. Though they considered themselves to be neither liberals nor feminists, the women Tyler portrays worked within existing social norms and political frameworks to challenge male hegemony in public life and embrace greater individual freedom and participation in government. Filled with previously untold, or only partially told, stories about some of Louisiana's most memorable political figures - female and male - Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes will broaden our views on southern activism.

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes

Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes PDF Author: Pamela Tyler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820334553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes is a narrative history of organized, politically active white women in twentieth-century New Orleans. Viewing their involvement as a link between pre-1920s progressivism and 1960s feminism. Pamela Tyler tells how these upper- and middle-class women sought and exercised power at the state and local levels through lobbying, fund-raising, endorsements, watchdog activities, volunteer work, voting, and candidacy. Beginning with an overview of New Orleans politics in the early twentieth century, Tyler looks at the presuffrage political activities of New Orleans women and discusses the relatively dormant state of women's political life in New Orleans in the 1920s. From there she traces, in the careers of the city's women leaders, a shift away from humanitarian, social justice issues toward politics. Subsequent chapters focus on Hilda Phelps Hammond and the Louisiana Women's Committee's crusade against Huey Long's political machine in the 1930s, Martha Gilmore Robinson and the nonpartisan activities of the Woman Citizens' Union and the League of Women Voters in the 1930s and 1940s, and the partisanship and direct political influence of the Independent Women's Organization in the 1940s and 1950s. The final chapters consider Martha Gilmore Robinson's unsuccessful bid for a seat on the New Orleans city council in 1954 and the civil rights activities in the 1950s and 1960s of Urban League stalwart Rosa Freeman Keller, now judged to be the most effective white liberal of her time in New Orleans. Throughout, Tyler places her subjects and their stories in the context of such national trends and events as the Depression. World War II, McCarthyism, and the civil rightsmovement. She discusses, for example, the New Orleans League of Women Voters' purge of suspected Communist sympathizers in 1947-48 and the involvement of a coterie of women's organizations in community efforts during the public school integration crisis from 1959 to 1961. Tyler also discusses the insularity of New Orleans society, the limiting effects of race- and class-consciousness on many of her subjects, and the postwar decline in the domination by elites of the women's political scene in New Orleans. Though they considered themselves to be neither liberals nor feminists, the women Tyler portrays worked within existing social norms and political frameworks to challenge male hegemony in public life and embrace greater individual freedom and participation in government. Filled with previously untold, or only partially told, stories about some of Louisiana's most memorable political figures - female and male - Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes will broaden our views on southern activism.

A Companion to the American South

A Companion to the American South PDF Author: John B. Boles
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781405121309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Companion to the American South surveys and evaluates the most important and innovative writing on the entire sweep of the history of the southern United States. Contains 29 original essays by leading experts in American Southern history. Covers the entire sweep of Southern history, including slavery, politics, the Civil War, race relations, religion, and women's history. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.

Mayor Victor H. Schiro

Mayor Victor H. Schiro PDF Author: Edward F. Haas
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626741808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the turbulent 1960s, the city of New Orleans experienced unprecedented economic growth, racial tensions and desegregation, political realignment, and natural disaster. Presiding over this period of sweeping change was Mayor Victor H. Schiro (1904-1992), an unassuming, moderate Democrat who sought the best for his city and adhered strictly to the rule of law in a region where laissez faire was standard practice and hardened defiance was a social norm. Schiro sought fairness for all and navigated a gauntlet of conflicting pressures. African Americans sought their civil rights, and whites resisted the new racial environment. Despite vigorous opposition and an unfriendly press, Schiro won election twice. Under his direction, the city experienced numerous municipal reforms, the inclusion of African Americans in executive positions, and the broad extension of city services. The mayor, a businessman, recruited new corporations for his city, heralded the development of New Orleans East, and brought major professional sports to the Crescent City. He also initiated the plans for the construction of the Superdome. At the height of this activity, Hurricane Betsy devastated New Orleans. In response, Schiro coordinated with the federal government to initiate rescue and recovery at a rapid pace. In the aftermath, he lobbied Congress for relief funds that set the precedent for National Federal flood insurance.

Fight Against Fear

Fight Against Fear PDF Author: Clive Webb
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 082034009X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the uneasily shared history of Jews and blacks in America, the struggle for civil rights in the South may be the least understood episode. Fight against Fear is the first book to focus on Jews and African Americans in that remarkable place and time. Mindful of both communities' precarious and contradictory standings in the South, Clive Webb tells a complex story of resistance and complicity, conviction and apathy. Webb begins by ranging over the experiences of southern Jews up to the eve of the civil rights movement--from antebellum slaveowners to refugees who fled Hitler's Europe only to arrive in the Jim Crow South. He then shows how the historical burden of ambivalence between Jews and blacks weighed on such issues as school desegregation, the white massive resistance movement, and business boycotts and sit-ins. As many Jews grappled as never before with the ways they had become--and yet never could become--southerners, their empathy with African Americans translated into scattered, individual actions rather than any large-scale, organized alliance between the two groups. The reasons for this are clear, Webb says, once we get past the notion that the choices of the much larger, less conservative, and urban-centered Jewish populations of the North define those of all American Jews. To understand Jews in the South we must look at their particular circumstances: their small numbers and wide distribution, denominational rifts, and well-founded anxiety over defying racial and class customs set by the region's white Protestant majority. For better or worse, we continue to define the history of Jews and blacks in America by its flash points. By setting aside emotions and shallow perceptions, Fight against Fear takes a substantial step toward giving these two communities the more open and evenhanded consideration their shared experiences demand.

Mothers of Massive Resistance

Mothers of Massive Resistance PDF Author: Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190271736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do white supremacist politics in America remain so powerful? Elizabeth Gillespie McRae argues that the answer lies with white women. Examining racial segregation from 1920s to the 1970s, Mothers of Massive Resistance explores the grassroots workers who maintained the system of racial segregation and Jim Crow. For decades in rural communities, in university towns, and in New South cities, white women performed myriad duties that upheld white over black: censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials. They instilled beliefs in racial hierarchies in their children, built national networks, and experimented with a color-blind political discourse. Without these mundane, everyday acts, white supremacist politics could not have shaped local, regional, and national politics the way it did or lasted as long as it has. With white women at the center of the story, the rise of postwar conservatism looks very different than the male-dominated narratives of the resistance to Civil Rights. Women like Nell Battle Lewis, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, and Cornelia Dabney Tucker publicized threats to their Jim Crow world through political organizing, private correspondence, and journalism. Their efforts began before World War II and the Brown decision and persisted past the 1964 Civil Rights Act and anti-busing protests. White women's segregationist politics stretched across the nation, overlapping with and shaping the rise of the New Right. Mothers of Massive Resistance reveals the diverse ways white women sustained white supremacist politics and thought well beyond the federal legislation that overturned legal segregation.

Cooperatives in New Orleans

Cooperatives in New Orleans PDF Author: Anne Gessler
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496827600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cooperatives have been central to the development of New Orleans. Anne Gessler asserts that local cooperatives have reshaped its built environment by changing where people interact and with whom, helping them collapse social hierarchies and envision new political systems. Gessler tracks many neighborhood cooperatives, spanning from the 1890s to the present, whose alliances with union, consumer, and social justice activists animated successive generations of regional networks and stimulated urban growth in New Orleans. Studying alternative forms of social organization within the city’s multiple integrated spaces, women, people of color, and laborers blended neighborhood-based African, Caribbean, and European communal activism with international cooperative principles to democratize exploitative systems of consumption, production, and exchange. From utopian socialist workers’ unions and Rochdale grocery stores to black liberationist theater collectives and community gardens, these cooperative entities integrated marginalized residents into democratic governance while equally distributing profits among members. Besides economic development, neighborhood cooperatives participated in heady debates over urban land use, applying egalitarian cooperative principles to modernize New Orleans’s crumbling infrastructure, monopolistic food distribution systems, and spotty welfare programs. As Gessler indicates, cooperative activists deployed street-level subsistence tactics to mobilize continual waves of ordinary people seizing control over mainstream economic and political institutions.

The Kingfish and His Realm

The Kingfish and His Realm PDF Author: William Ivy Hair
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807141069
Category : Governors
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book Here

Book Description


Race and Radio

Race and Radio PDF Author: Bala James Baptiste
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496822102
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Race and Radio: Pioneering Black Broadcasters in New Orleans, Bala James Baptiste traces the history of the integration of radio broadcasting in New Orleans and tells the story of how African American on-air personalities transformed the medium. Analyzing a trove of primary data—including archived manuscripts, articles and display advertisements in newspapers, oral narratives of historical memories, and other accounts of African Americans and radio in New Orleans between 1945 and 1965—Baptiste constructs a formidable narrative of broadcast history, racism, and black experience in this enormously influential radio market. The historiography includes the rise and progression of black broadcasters who reshaped the Crescent City. The first, O. C. W. Taylor, hosted an unprecedented talk show, the Negro Forum, on WNOE beginning in 1946. Three years later in 1949, listeners heard Vernon "Dr. Daddy-O" Winslow's smooth and creative voice as a disk jockey on WWEZ. The book also tells of Larry McKinley who arrived in New Orleans from Chicago in 1953 and played a critical role in informing black listeners about the civil rights movement in the city. The racial integration of radio presented opportunities for African Americans to speak more clearly, in their own voices, and with a technological tool that opened a broader horizon in which to envision community. While limited by corporate pressures and demands from advertisers ranging from local funeral homes to Jax beer, these black broadcasters helped unify and organize the communities to which they spoke. Race and Radio captures the first overtures of this new voice and preserves a history of black radio's awakening.

The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South

The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South PDF Author: Shirley A. Wiegand
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807168688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens. The Wiegands trace the struggle for equal access to the years before the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, when black activists in the South focused their efforts on equalizing accommodations, rather than on the more daunting—and dangerous—task of undoing segregation. After the ruling, momentum for vigorously pursuing equality grew, and black organizations shifted to more direct challenges to the system, including public library sit-ins and lawsuits against library systems. Although local groups often took direction from larger civil rights organizations, the energy, courage, and determination of younger black community members ensured the eventual desegregation of Jim Crow public libraries. The Wiegands examine the library desegregation movement in several southern cities and states, revealing the ways that individual communities negotiated—mostly peacefully, sometimes violently—the integration of local public libraries. This study adds a new chapter to the history of civil rights activism in the mid-twentieth century and celebrates the resolve of community activists as it weaves the account of racial discrimination in public libraries through the national narrative of the civil rights movement.

Radical Volunteers

Radical Volunteers PDF Author: Katherine J. Ballantyne
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820366471
Category : Civil rights movements
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Radical Volunteers tells the largely unknown story of southern student activism in Tennessee between the Brown decision in 1954 and the national backlash against the Kent State University shootings in May 1970. As one of the first statewide studies of student activism-and one of the few examinations of southern student activism-it broadens scholarly understanding of New Left and Black student radicalism from its traditionally defined hotbeds in the Northeast and the West Coast. By incorporating accounts of students from both historically Black and predominantly white colleges and universities across Tennessee, this research places events that might otherwise appear random and intermittent into conversation with one another. This methodological approach reveals that students' joined organizations and became activists in an effort to assert their autonomy and, as a result, student power became a rallying cry across the state. It illuminates a broad movement comprised of many different sorts of students-white and Black, private and public, western, middle, and east Tennesseans. Importantly, Ballantyne doesn't confine her analysis to just campuses. Indeed, Radical Volunteersalso situates campus activism with their broader communities. Tennessee student activists built upon relationships with Old Left activists and organizations, thereby fostering their otherwise fledgling enterprises, and creating the possibility for radical change in the politically-conservative region. But framing student activism over a long period of time across Tennessee as a whole reveals disjuncture as much as coherence in the movement. Though all case studies contain particular and representative features, Tennessee's diversity lends itself well to a study of regional variations. Though outnumbered, Tennessee student activists secured significant campus reforms, pursued ambitious community initiatives, and articulated a powerful countervision for the South and the United States"--