Freedom North

The civil rights movement occupies a prominent place in popular thinking and scholarly work on post-1945 U.S. history. Yet the dominant narrative of the movement remains that of a nonviolent movement born in the South during the 1950s that emerged triumphant in the early 1960s, only to be derailed by the twin forces of Black Power and white backlash when it sought to move outside the South after 1965. African American protest and political movements outside the South appear as ancillary and subsequent to the 'real' movement in the South, despite the fact that black activism existed in the North, Midwest, and West in the 1940s, and persisted well into the 1970s. This book brings together new scholarship on black social movements outside the South to rethink the civil rights narrative and the place of race in recent history. Each chapter focuses on a different location and movement outside the South, revealing distinctive forms of U.S. racism according to place and the varieties of tactics and ideologies that community members used to attack these inequalities, to show that the civil rights movement was indeed a national movement for racial justice and liberation.

BETH BATES Wayne State University SCOT BROWN Cornell University KATHLEEN CLEAVER Sarah Lawrence College ANGELA D. DILLARD New York University JOANNA FERNANDEZ Columbia University ROBIN D.G. KELLEY New York University FELICIA KORNBLUTH Duke University MANNING MARABLE Columbia University JOHN RICE Northern Illinois University ROBERT SELF University of Michigan ULA TAYLOR University of California, Berkeley RHONDA Y. WILLLIAMS Case Western University