Lay Bare The Heart An Autobiography Of The Civil Rights Movement

Texas native James Farmer is one of the “Big Four” of the turbulent 1960s civil rights movement, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Farmer might be called the forgotten man of the movement, overshadowed by Martin Luther King Jr., who was deeply influenced by Farmer’s interpretation of Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent protest. Born in Marshall, Texas, in 1920, the son of a preacher, Farmer grew up with segregated movie theaters and “White Only” drinking fountains. This background impelled him to found the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942. That same year he mobilized the first sit-in in an all-white restaurant near the University of Chicago. Under Farmer’s direction, CORE set the pattern for the civil rights movement by peaceful protests which eventually led to the dramatic “Freedom Rides” of the 1960s. In Lay Bare the Heart Farmer tells the story of the heroic civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. This moving and unsparing personal account captures both the inspiring strengths and human weaknesses of a movement beset by rivalries, conflicts and betrayals. Farmer recalls meetings with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson (for whom he had great respect), and Lyndon Johnson (who, according to Farmer, used Adam Clayton Powell Jr., to thwart a major phase of the movement). James Farmer has courageously worked for dignity for all people in the United States. In this book, he tells his story with forthright honesty. First published in 1985 by Arbor House, this edition contains a new foreword by Don Carleton, director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, and a new preface.

A majestic one-hundred-year study of segregation in Los Angeles City of Segregation documents one hundred years of struggle against the enforced separation of racial groups through property markets, constructions of community, and the growth of neoliberalism. This movement history covers the decades of work to end legal support for segregation in 1948; the 1960s Civil Rights movement and CORE’s efforts to integrate LA’s white suburbs; and the 2006 victory preserving 10,000 downtown residential hotel units from gentrification enfolded within ongoing resistance to the criminalization and displacement of the homeless. Andrea Gibbons reveals the shape and nature of the racist ideology that must be fought, in Los Angeles and across the United States, if we hope to found just cities.

James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater provides a rhetorical and biographical guide to how the American Civil Rights Movement came into being. It details James Farmer Jr.’s intellectual emergence as a young debater at an HBCU in Marshall, Texas and ultimately chronicles how this led to the emergence of the first non-violent sit-in against segregation in 1942 in Chicago. Farmer was a key founder of the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] that pioneered the non-violent strategies that would later be used by Martin Luther King. He debated important figures like Malcolm X to provide a powerful advocacy grounded in the praxis of argumentation. Ben Voth demonstrates the ongoing relevance of Farmer’s successful debate methodology in resolving contemporary race problems in the 21st century such as Black Lives Matter.

How did African Americans gain the ability to apply Gandhian nonviolence during the civil rights movement? Responses generally focus on Martin Luther King’s “pilgrimage to nonviolence” or favorable social contexts and processes. This book, in contrast, highlights the role of collective learning in the Gandhian repertoire’s transnational diffusion. Collective learning shaped the invention of the Gandhian repertoire in South Africa and India as well as its transnational diffusion to the United States. In the 1920s, African Americans and their allies responded to Gandhi’s ideas and practices by reproducing stereotypes. Meaningful collective learning started with translation of the Gandhian repertoire in the 1930s and small-scale experimentation in the early 1940s. After surviving the doldrums of the McCarthy era, full implementation of the Gandhian repertoire finally occurred during the civil rights movement between 1955 and 1965. This book goes beyond existing scholarship by contributing deeper and finer insights on how transnational diffusion between social movements actually works. It highlights the contemporary relevance of Gandhian nonviolence and its successful journey across borders.

From the end of postwar Reconstruction in the South to an analysis of the rise and fall of Black Power, acclaimed historian Adam Fairclough presents a straightforward synthesis of the century-long struggle of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in the United States. Beginning with Ida B. Wells and the campaign against lynching in the 1890s, Fairclough chronicles the tradition of protest that led to the formation of the NAACP, Booker T. Washington and the strategy of accommodation, Marcus Garvey and the push for black nationalism, through to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond. Throughout, Fairclough presents a judicious interpretation of historical events that balances the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement against the persistence of racial and economic inequalities.

Over the past thirty years, Steven F. Lawson has established himself as one of the nation's leading historians of the black struggle for equality. Civil Rights Crossroads is an important collection of Lawson's writings about the civil rights movement that is essential reading for anyone concerned about the past, present, and future of race relations in America. Lawson examines the movement from a variety of perspectives—local and national, political and social—to offer penetrating insights into the civil rights movement and its influence on contemporary society. Civil Rights Crossroads also illuminates the role of a broad array of civil rights activists, familiar and unfamiliar. Lawson describes the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson to shape the direction of the struggle, as well as the extraordinary contributions of ordinary people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Harry T. Moore, Ruth Perry, Theodore Gibson, and many other unsung heroes of the most important social movement of the twentieth century. Lawson also examines the decades-long battle to achieve and expand the right of African Americans to vote and to implement the ballot as the cornerstone of attempts at political liberation.

The rock and roll music that dominated airwaves across the country during the 1950s and early 1960s is often described as a triumph for integration. Black and white musicians alike, including Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, scored hit records with young audiences from different racial groups, blending sonic traditions from R&B, country, and pop. This so-called "desegregation of the charts" seemed particularly resonant since major civil rights groups were waging major battles for desegregation in public places at the same time. And yet the centering of integration, as well as the supposition that democratic rights largely based in consumerism should be available to everyone regardless of race, has resulted in very distinct responses to both music and movement among Black and white listeners who grew up during this period. Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: An "Integrated Effort" traces these distinctions using archival research, musical performances, and original oral histories to determine the uncertain legacies of the civil rights movement and early rock and roll music in a supposedly post-civil rights era.