The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill

The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill PDF Author: Helen Shores Lee
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310336236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
These are the firsthand accounts of sisters Helen and Barbara Shores growing up with their father, Arthur Shores, a prominent Civil Rights attorney, during the 60s in the Jim Crow south Birmingham district—a frequent target of the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1948 and 1963, some 50 unsolved Klan bombings happened in Smithfield where the Shores family lived, earning their neighborhood the nickname “Dynamite Hill.” Due to his work, Shores’ daughter, Barbara, barely survived a kidnapping attempt. Twice, in 1963, Klan members bombed their home, sending Theodora to the hospital with a brain concussion and killing Tasso, the family’s cocker spaniel. The family narrowly escaped a third bombing attempt on their home in the spring of 1965. The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill is an incredible story of a family’s unfair suffering, but also of the Shores’ overcoming. This family’s sacrificial commitment, courage, determination, and triumph inspire us today through this story and the selfless service, work, and lives of Helen Shores Lee and Barbara Sylvia Shores.

The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill

The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill PDF Author: Helen Shores Lee
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 0310336236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
These are the firsthand accounts of sisters Helen and Barbara Shores growing up with their father, Arthur Shores, a prominent Civil Rights attorney, during the 60s in the Jim Crow south Birmingham district—a frequent target of the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1948 and 1963, some 50 unsolved Klan bombings happened in Smithfield where the Shores family lived, earning their neighborhood the nickname “Dynamite Hill.” Due to his work, Shores’ daughter, Barbara, barely survived a kidnapping attempt. Twice, in 1963, Klan members bombed their home, sending Theodora to the hospital with a brain concussion and killing Tasso, the family’s cocker spaniel. The family narrowly escaped a third bombing attempt on their home in the spring of 1965. The Gentle Giant of Dynamite Hill is an incredible story of a family’s unfair suffering, but also of the Shores’ overcoming. This family’s sacrificial commitment, courage, determination, and triumph inspire us today through this story and the selfless service, work, and lives of Helen Shores Lee and Barbara Sylvia Shores.

Civil Rights Queen

Civil Rights Queen PDF Author: Tomiko Brown-Nagin
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 152474719X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post “A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP's Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary. Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions--how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

Reading Harper Lee

Reading Harper Lee PDF Author: Claudia Durst Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440861285
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
The first book-length study of Harper Lee's two novels, this is the ultimate reference for those interested in Harper Lee's writing, most notably as it considers race, class, and gender. To Kill a Mockingbird is timeless, continuing to be a favorite among both students and adults. One million copies are sold every year, and it remains one of the books most often taught in school. This companion guide helps students to better understand the complex themes of race, class, and gender that were first introduced in To Kill a Mockingbird and remain relevant in Go Set a Watchman, which both challenges and mirrors the topics discussed in Lee's first novel. A literary scholar and a friend of Harper Lee herself, author Claudia Durst Johnson brings a unique perspective to Lee's texts. The book provides a historical background of the Great Depression and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement as well as an analysis of the widespread censorship of Lee's works. Chapters provide important context for topics such as racial issues, women's issues, and class divisions in the Deep South and serve as discussion points that give students a starting point for their research; similarly, teachers who struggle with how to introduce students to these challenging but timely topics will appreciate the wealth of knowledge this companion guide will deliver.

Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South

Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South PDF Author: Brandon T. Jett
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807175552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Throughout the Jim Crow era, southern police departments played a vital role in the maintenance of white supremacy. Police targeted African Americans through an array of actions, including violent interactions, unjust arrests, and the enforcement of segregation laws and customs. Scholars have devoted much attention to law enforcement’s use of aggression and brutality as a means of maintaining African American subordination. While these interpretations are vital to the broader understanding of police and minority relations, Black citizens have often come off as powerless in their encounters with law enforcement. Brandon T. Jett’s Race, Crime, and Policing in the Jim Crow South, by contrast, reveals previously unrecognized efforts by African Americans to use, manage, and exploit policing. In the process, Jett exposes a much more complex relationship, suggesting that while violence or the threat of violence shaped police and minority relations, it did not define all interactions. Black residents of southern cities repeatedly complained about violent policing strategies and law enforcement’s seeming lack of interest in crimes committed against African Americans. These criticisms notwithstanding, Blacks also voiced a desire for the police to become more involved in their communities to reduce the seemingly intractable problem of crime, much of which resulted from racial discrimination and other structural factors related to Jim Crow. Although the actions of the police were problematic, African Americans nonetheless believed that law enforcement could play a role in reducing crime in their communities. During the first half of the twentieth century, Black citizens repeatedly demanded better policing and engaged in behaviors designed to extract services from law enforcement officers in Black neighborhoods as part of a broader strategy to make their communities safer. By examining the myriad ways in which African Americans influenced the police to serve the interests of the Black community, Jett adds a new layer to our understanding of race relations in the urban South in the Jim Crow era and contributes to current debates around the relationship between the police and minorities in the United States.

Schoolhouse Activists

Schoolhouse Activists PDF Author: Tondra L. Loder-Jackson
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438458614
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Examines the role of African American educators in the Birmingham civil rights movement. Schoolhouse Activists examines the role that African American educators played in the Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights movement from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing on multiple perspectives from education, history, and sociology, Tondra L. Loder-Jackson revisits longstanding debates about whether these educators were friends or foes of the civil rights movement. She also uses Black feminist thought and the life course perspective to illuminate the unique and often clandestine brand of activism that these teachers cultivated. The book will serve as a resource for current educators and their students grappling with contemporary struggles for educational justice.

Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement

Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement PDF Author: Christopher M. Richardson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0810880377
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 663

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Book Description
The fiftieth anniversary of many major milestones in what is commonly called the African-American Civil Rights Movement was celebrated in 2013. Fifty years removed from the Birmingham campaign, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the March on Washington and it is clear that the sacrifices borne by those generations in that decade were not in vain. Monuments, museums, and exhibitions across the world honor the men and women of the Movement and testify to their immeasurable role in redefining the United States. The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement is a guide to the history of the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. The history of this period is covered in a detailed chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, significant legal cases, local struggles, forgotten heroes, and prominent women in the Movement. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil Rights Movement.

In Love and Struggle

In Love and Struggle PDF Author: Stephen M. Ward
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
James Boggs (1919-1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015) were two largely unsung but critically important figures in the black freedom struggle. Born and raised in Alabama, James Boggs came to Detroit during the Great Migration, becoming an automobile worker and a union activist. Grace Lee was a Chinese American scholar who studied Hegel, worked with Caribbean political theorist C. L. R. James, and moved to Detroit to work toward a new American revolution. As husband and wife, the couple was influential in the early stages of what would become the Black Power movement, laying the intellectual foundation for racial and urban struggles during one of the most active social movement periods in recent U.S. history. Stephen Ward details both the personal and the political dimensions of the Boggses' lives, highlighting the vital contributions these two figures made to black activist thinking. At once a dual biography of two crucial figures and a vivid portrait of Detroit as a center of activism, Ward's book restores the Boggses, and the intellectual strain of black radicalism they shaped, to their rightful place in postwar American history.

Free the Land

Free the Land PDF Author: Edward Onaci
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469656159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans' best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). New Afrikan citizens traced boundaries that encompassed a large portion of the South--including South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana--as part of their demand for reparation. As champions of these goals, they framed their struggle as one that would allow the descendants of enslaved people to choose freely whether they should be citizens of the United States. New Afrikans also argued for financial restitution for the enslavement and subsequent inhumane treatment of Black Americans. The struggle to "Free the Land" remains active to this day. This book is the first to tell the full history of the RNA and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Edward Onaci shows how New Afrikans remade their lifestyles and daily activities to create a self-consciously revolutionary culture, and argues that the RNA's tactics and ideology were essential to the evolution of Black political struggles. Onaci expands the story of Black Power politics, shedding new light on the long-term legacies of mid-century Black Nationalism.

A Woman's Right to Rest

A Woman's Right to Rest PDF Author: Denise George
Publisher: ACU Press
ISBN: 0891127690
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This book presents the fourteen di!erent types of biblical rest and shows how tired and overworked women can incorporate them into their everyday lives. Today's Christian women are tired. They battle exhaustion—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. They have too much work to do, and far too many people who depend on them. While they may treasure their roles as wives, mothers, church volunteers, and career women, oftentimes, in trying to manage everything well, they forfeit personal rest and refreshment time. Without necessarily meaning to, family members, employers, society, and even the church often urge women to work harder and accomplish more. Some women today believe they have no "right" to rest. Many have never been given permission to rest. Some Christian women admit they feel guilty or sel"sh when they rest, as if they are wasting their time. These women have never discovered the life-enhancing secrets of biblical rest—the type of rest God's Word clearly teaches. Women need to know that God created them to rest, both the "put-up-your-feet-for-ten-minutes-rest," as well as the deeply-satisfying, life renewing rest God's Word teaches. God gives his daughters permission to rest—the right to rest! In A Woman's Right to Rest, you will discover the fourteen distinctive types of rest Scripture teaches and encourages, and that biblical characters (including Jesus himself) demonstrate in the Gospels. You will learn how to incorporate each type of rest into your busy, everyday life. What this book will do for readers: • Explain biblical rest and how it di!ers from society's de"nition of rest • Teach the fourteen di!erent types of biblical rest and how to incorporate them into everyday life • Show Christian women that biblical rest is a Scriptural mandate, not a luxury • Explain why regular biblical rest is essential to a woman's life, work, and faith • Show how biblical rest empowers and enhances a woman's total health, relationships, work/career, and God-called ministry to others • Provide practical ways to rest (as taught by Scripture), showing how to make each rest time a meaningful and spiritual experience

Last Chance for Justice

Last Chance for Justice PDF Author: T. K. Thorne
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613748671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
On the morning of September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded outside the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls. Thirty-two years later, stymied by a code of silence and an imperfect and often racist legal system, only one person, Robert “Dynamite Bob” Chambliss, had been convicted in the murders, though a wider conspiracy was suspected. With many key witnesses and two suspects already dead, there seemed little hope of bringing anyone else to justice. But in 1995 the FBI and local law enforcement reopened the investigation in secret, led by detective Ben Herren of the Birmingham Police Department and special agent Bill Fleming of the FBI. For over a year, Herren and Fleming analyzed the original FBI files on the bombing and activities of the Ku Klux Klan, then began a search for new evidence. Their first interview—with Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry—broke open the case, but not in the way they expected. Told by a longtime officer of the Birmingham Police Department, Last Chance for Justice is the inside story of one of the most infamous crimes of the civil rights era. T. K. Thorne follows the ups and downs of the investigation, detailing how Herren and Fleming identified new witnesses and unearthed lost evidence. With tenacity, humor, dedication, and some luck, the pair encountered the worst and best in human nature on their journey to find justice, and perhaps closure, for the citizens of Birmingham.