Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972

In studying Louisiana, Fairclough's previous works (Martin Luther King, Jr.) focused only on the post-1955 civil rights movement. Here, he observes that black protest from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s formed a significant movement in its own right. Thus, this sweeping study, which covers much of Louisiana, subtly delves into a rich history. Fairclough establishes Louisiana's distinctive creole heritage and describes the NAACP's first effort to equalize black and white teachers' pay in the 1930s. Bars to voting, education and public accommodations began to fall in the 1940s, but the state resisted the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, even attacking the NAACP. Fairclough recounts the violence of court-ordered New Orleans school integration, describes CORE's entry into the state and, intriguingly, shows how mid-1960s activism in benighted Bogalusa, La., bridged the passage to black militancy. The book nominally ends in 1972, when, the author observes, both blacks and whites had lost faith in school integration, at least as it had been introduced. Since then, he argues, the rise of David Duke and resistance to him suggest the reality of both white racism and black political power. An interesting, if specialized, account.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

University of Leeds historian Fairclough has studied the U.S. civil rights movement from a national perspective with his work on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, To Redeem the Soul of America (1987), and with Martin Luther King Jr.. His research on the struggle for racial equality in Louisiana convinces him that the Montgomery-to-Selma 1955^-65 story of the civil rights movement is incomplete. "Black protest between the late 1930s and the mid-50s constituted more," he argues, "than a mere prelude to the drama proper: it was the first act of a two-act play." And this longer time frame grants the NAACP a role as important as that of SCLC, CORE, or SNCC. Fairclough draws on archival collections, FBI files and other government documents, interviews, and secondary sources to trace the fight for political, economic, and social rights for African Americans in "the most diverse and unique southern state" from the final years of Huey Long to the 1972 election of Governor Edwin Edwards. A final chapter, "Struggle Without End," considers more recent Louisiana politics. Race & Democracy is a local history that raises issues of more than regional interest. Mary Carroll

British scholar Fairclough examines the history of the Civil Rights movement in Louisiana from 1915, when the New Orleans branch of the NAACP was founded, through the start of the first administration of Governor Edwin Edwards in 1972. He has written the most comprehensive account yet of the movement in Louisiana and perhaps in any Southern state. Especially valuable is the discussion of the movement during the decades before the Supreme Court's 1954 decision overturning racial segregation in public schools?a period that many scholars have neglected. Fairclough also explores the cultural diversity that differentiates Louisiana from other deep Southern states and provides a cogent analysis of the impact of that diversity on the Civil Rights struggle in the state. The work's value is reduced only slightly by a number of minor inaccuracies. Recommended for academic libraries.?Thomas H. Ferrell, Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.