Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago - Hardcover

Anderson, Alan B.; Pikering, George W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820308420 ISBN 13: 9780820308425

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1987

Synopsis

In Confronting the Color Line, Alan Anderson and George Pickering examine the hopes and strategies, the frustrations and internal conflicts, the hard-won successes and bitter disappointments of the civil rights movement in Chicago. The scene of a protracted local struggle to force equality in education and open housing for blacks, the city also became the focus of national attention in the summer of 1966 as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference challenged the entrenched political machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley. The failure of King's campaign--a failure he would not live to redeem--marked the final unsuccessful attempt to secure significant social change in Chicago, and soon afterward the national civil rights movement itself would unravel amid white backlash and cries of black power.

Picking up the threads of our own recent history, Confronting the Color Line examines a political movement that remains unfinished, a dilemma for America's system of democratic social change that remains unsolved.

About this title

Reviews

This book initially appears to be a rather straightforward history of the failed attempts in the Sixties to desegregate schools and housing in Chicago. On closer reading it proves to be a complex and troubling essay on past and present American racism. It outlines various historical approaches to racial issues within American democracy, then turns to Chicago, describing the emergence of the race issue and offering a detailed examination of the local civil rights struggle. It is a model explication of strategy, conflict, and leadership on race issues. After showing the promising Chicago movement's collapse, the book returns to the broader issue of race in American society. A rewarding, challenging work for informed laypersons, scholars, and specialists. Charles K. Piehl, Director of Sponsored Progs., Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820308420
• ISBN 13: 9780820308425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 552