Jumpin Jim Crow Southern Politics from the Civil War to Civil Rights

9780691001937

0691001936

"This volume is especially pertinent because so many historians over the last decade have de-emphasized the importance of race in the South. . . . These essays argue that the central dance of southern history was the efforts of whites to dominate African Americans. Expanding the definition of the political to include the front porch, these essays bridge 'the distance between public and private contests for power and dignity.' Focusing on the role of African Americans, dissident whites, and especially black and white women, these essays help explain how the most progressive of reform movements, the Civil Rights Movement, came out of what has been viewed by too many for too long as the 'backward' South."--Vernon Burton, author ofIn My Father's House Are Many MansionsandA Gentleman and an Officer "This important book offers a pathbreaking approach to the study of southern politics and culture. Finding the political in 'unlikely spaces,' these essays require us to rethink the foundations of white supremacy and of southern history more generally."--Drew Gilpin Faust, Annenberg Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania