Before Brown
Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South
Details the ferment in civil rights that took place across the South before the momentous Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954
This collection refutes the notion that the movement began with the Supreme Court decision, and suggests, rather, that the movement originated in the 1930s and earlier, spurred by the Great Depression and, later, World War II—events that would radically shape the course of politics in the South and the nation into the next century.
This work explores the growth of the movement through its various manifestations—the activities of politicians, civil rights leaders, religious figures, labor unionists, and grass-roots activists—throughout the 1940s and 1950s. It discusses the critical leadership roles played by women and offers a new perspective on the relationship between the NAACP and the Communist Party.
Before Brown shows clearly that, as the drive toward racial equality advanced and national political attitudes shifted, the validity of white supremacy came increasingly into question. Institutionalized racism in the South had always offered white citizens material advantages by preserving their economic superiority and making them feel part of a privileged class. When these rewards were threatened by the civil rights movement, a white backlash occurred.
A valuable and timely volume . . . particularly welcome for the emphasis it places on the churches, on white women, and on returning black and white veterans, groups whose postwar role has been too long ignored.’
—Anthony J. Badger, author of Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina and The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940
Patricia Sullivan is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era.
Foreword, Patricia Sullivan
Prologue, Glenn Feldman
1. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow": CORE and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation
Raymond Arsenault
2 T. R. M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954
David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito
3. "Blood on Your Hands": White Southerners' Criticism of Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II
Pamela Tyler
4. "City Mothers": Dorothy Tilly, Georgia Methodist Women, and Black Civil Rights
Andrew M. Manis
5. Louisiana: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1940-1954
Adam Fairclough
6. Communism, Anti-Communism, and Massive Resistance: The Civil Rights Congress in Southern Perspective
Sarah Hart Brown
7. E. D. Nixon and the White Supremacists: Civil Rights in Montgomery
John White
8. "Flag-bearers for Integration and Justice": Local Civil Rights Groups in the South, 1940-1954
John A. Salmond
9. Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II
Jennifer E. Brooks
Epilogue: Ugly Roots: Race, Emotion, and the Rise of the Modern Republican Party in Alabama and the South
Glenn Feldman
Notes
Contributors
Index
