Gender and the Civil Rights Movement

This collection of nine essays analyzes the people, the protests, and the incidents of the civil rights movement through the lens of gender. More than just a study of women, the book examines the ways in which assigned sexual roles and values shaped the strategy, tactics, and ideology of the movement. The essays deal with topics ranging from the Montgomery bus boycott and Rhythm and Blues to gangsta rap and contemporary fiction, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Referring to groups such as the National Council of African American Men and events such as the Million Man March, the authors address male gender identity as much as female, arguing that slave/master relations from before the Civil War continued to affect Black masculinity in the postwar battle for civil rights. Whereas feminism traditionally deals with issues of patriarchy and prescribed gender roles, this volume shows how race relations continue to complicate sex-based definitions within the civil rights movement.

Peter J. Ling is reader in American history at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Martin Luther King Jr. and The Democratic Party: A Photographic History.

Sharon Monteith is reader in American studies at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture and Advancing Sisterhood?: Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction. She was awarded the Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship at the University of Memphis, 2001-2002.