Between 1958 and 1970, a distinctive movement for racial justice emerged from unique circumstances in Milwaukee. A series of local leaders inspired growing numbers of people to participate in campaigns against employment and housing discrimination, segregated public schools, the membership of public officials in discriminatory organizations, welfare cuts, and police brutality. The Milwaukee movement culminated in the dramaticÑand sometimes violentÑ1967 open housing campaign. A white Catholic priest, James Groppi, led the NAACP Youth Council and Commandos in a militant struggle that lasted for 200 consecutive nights and provoked the ire of thousands of white residents. After working-class mobs attacked demonstrators, some called Milwaukee Òthe Selma of the North.Ó Others believed the housing campaign represented the last stand for a nonviolent, interracial, church-based movement. Patrick Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism. Jones offers a valuable contribution to movement history in the urban North that also adds a vital piece to the national story.

Between 1958 and 1970, a distinctive movement for racial justice emerged from unique circumstances in Milwaukee. A series of local leaders inspired growing numbers of people to participate in campaigns against employment and housing discrimination, segregated public schools, the membership of public officials in discriminatory organizations, welfare cuts, and police brutality. The Milwaukee movement culminated in the dramatic—and sometimes violent—1967 open housing campaign. A white Catholic priest, James Groppi, led the NAACP Youth Council and Commandos in a militant struggle that lasted for 200 consecutive nights and provoked the ire of thousands of white residents. After working-class mobs attacked demonstrators, some called Milwaukee “the Selma of the North.” Others believed the housing campaign represented the last stand for a nonviolent, interracial, church-based movement. Patrick Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism. Jones offers a valuable contribution to movement history in the urban North that also adds a vital piece to the national story.

The history of the civil rights movement is commonly illustrated with well-known photographs from Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma—leaving the visual story of the movement outside the South remaining to be told. InNorth of Dixie, historian Mark Speltz shines a light past the most iconic photographs of the era to focus on images of everyday activists who fought campaigns against segregation, police brutality, and job discrimination in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and many other cities. With images by photojournalists, artists, and activists, including Bob Adelman Charles Brittin, Diana Davies, Leonard Freed, Gordon Parks, and Art Shay, North of Dixie offers a broader and more complex view of the American civil rights movement than is usually presented by the media.North of Dixie also considers the camera as a tool that served both those in support of the movement and against it. Photographs inspired activists, galvanized public support, and implored local and national politicians to act, but they also provided means of surveillance and repression that were used against movement participants. North of Dixie brings to light numerous lesser-known images and illuminates the story of the civil rights movement in the American North and West.

Sweet Land of Liberty is Thomas J. Sugrue’s epic account of the abiding quest for racial equality in states from Illinois to New York, and of how the intense northern struggle differed from and was inspired by the fight down South. Sugrue’s panoramic view sweeps from the 1920s to the present–more than eighty of the most decisive years in American history. He uncovers the forgotten stories of battles to open up lunch counters, beaches, and movie theaters in the North; the untold history of struggles against Jim Crow schools in northern towns; the dramatic story of racial conflict in northern cities and suburbs; and the long and tangled histories of integration and black power. Filled with unforgettable characters and riveting incidents, and making use of information and accounts both public and private, such as the writings of obscure African American journalists and the records of civil rights and black power groups, Sweet Land of Liberty creates an indelible history.

Six months after the Selma to Montgomery marches and just weeks after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a group from Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff arrived in Chicago, eager to apply his nonviolent approach to social change in a northern city. Once there, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined the locally based Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) to form the Chicago Freedom Movement. The open housing demonstrations they organized eventually resulted in a controversial agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley and other city leaders, the fallout of which has historically led some to conclude that the movement was largely ineffective. In this important volume, an eminent team of scholars and activists offer an alternative assessment of the Chicago Freedom Movement's impact on race relations and social justice, both in the city and across the nation. Building upon recent works, the contributors reexamine the movement and illuminate its lasting contributions in order to challenge conventional perceptions that have underestimated its impressive legacy.

Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism.

The high point of the 1960s civil rights movement, Selma was a landmark achievement for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, religious activists from all over the country, and the brave citizens of Selma who made it happen. This watershed 1965 direct action campaign resulted in passage of the Voting Rights Act. 'Selma 1965," first published in 1974, is widely recognized as the most vivid and accurate account of the Selma movement for general readers. For this Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, it has been updated with an overview of the continuing struggles for justice and equality for all, both in Selma and across the Unites States. Charles Fager was a junior staff member for Dr. King's Southern Christian leadership Conference in 1965. Since then he has been a reporter, researcher, peace activist, and the author of numerous books. "A fascinating portrait of the most significant campaign of the civil rights movement. Charles Fager's Selma 1965 does more than any book I have read to bring that epoch back to life. The story of Selma is a rich, complex one, with important positive and negative lessons for anyone who cares about the art of political organizing. Fager's carefully-researched, precisely written book tells it with great clarity and power." - Washington Post Book World "One of the most notable studies of a social crisis to appear in recent years . . . .As reported in this temperate and balanced account, the victory was not an easy one." -Christian Century "Through graphic scenes and dramatic narration, Selma 1965, provides a fascinating, unforgettable portrait of the most significant campaign of the civil rights movement....His compelling work keeps Selma, 1965, firmly in our memories, our imaginations, and our hearts." -Stephen B. Oates, author, Let the Trumpet Sound, The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Slow march toward freedom -- Seeds of protest -- Bloody Sunday -- My feets is tired, but my soul is rested -- A season of suffering

In Why the Vote Wasn't Enough for Selma Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to explain why gaining the right to vote did not bring about economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Forner illustrates how voting rights failed to offset decades of systematic disfranchisement and unequal investment in African American communities. Forner contextualizes Selma as a place, not a moment within the civil rights movement —a place where black citizens' fight for full citizenship unfolded alongside an agricultural shift from cotton farming to cattle raising, the implementation of federal divestment policies, and economic globalization. At the end of the twentieth century, Selma's celebrated political legacy looked worlds apart from the dismal economic realities of the region. Forner demonstrates that voting rights are only part of the story in the black freedom struggle and that economic justice is central to achieving full citizenship.

The story of the civil rights movement typically begins with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and culminates with the 1965 voting rights struggle in Selma. But as Martha Biondi shows, a grassroots struggle for racial equality in the urban North began a full ten years before the rise of the movement in the South. This story is an essential first chapter, not only to the southern movement that followed, but to the riots that erupted in northern and western cities just as the civil rights movement was achieving major victories. Biondi tells the story of African Americans who mobilized to make the war against fascism a launching pad for a postwar struggle against white supremacy at home. Rather than seeking integration in the abstract, black New Yorkers demanded first-class citizenship--jobs for all, affordable housing, protection from police violence, access to higher education, and political representation. This powerful local push for economic and political equality met broad resistance, yet managed to win several landmark laws barring discrimination and segregation. To Stand and Fight demonstrates how black New Yorkers launched the modern civil rights struggle and left a rich legacy. Table of Contents: Prologue: The Rise of the Struggle for Negro Rights 1 Jobs for All 2 Black Mobilization and Civil Rights Politics 3 Lynching, Northern style 4 Desegregating the metropolis 5 Dead Letter Legislation 6 An Unnatural Division of People 7 Anticommunism and Civil Rights 8 The Paradoxical Effects of the Cold War 9 Racial Violence in the Free World 10 Lift Every Voice and Vote 11 Resisting Resegregation 12 To Stand and Fight Epilogue: Another Kind of America Notes Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Index Reviews of this book: Historians have thoroughly documented the experiences of those African Americans who lived in the South and worked to repeal Jim Crow laws. However, in this work, Biondi explores what she calls 'the struggle for Negro rights' in New York City, an exploration resulting in a stark reminder of the daily challenges facing blacks who lived in northern cities...With its detailed discussions of the American Labor Party, the Communist Party, Black Nationalism, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., W. E. B. Dubois, Roy Wilkins, and, especially, Paul Robeson, this work should be required reading for all historians interested in the post-WW II experience of African Americans in the urban North. --T. D. Beal, Choice Reviews of this book: In this meticulously researched monograph, Biondi reminds the reader that the struggle for black civil rights was waged in the North before it was joined in the South. She documents the fight against racial discrimination in hiring, police brutality, housing segregation, lack of political representation, and inadequate schools in New York City between 1946 and 1954...Biondi's writing is crisp and direct. She introduces the reader to a host of activists whose efforts deserve to be remembered. Unfortunately, most of the causes they championed remain with us today. --Paul T. Murray, MultiCultural Review With stunning research and powerful arguments, Martha Biondi charts a new direction in civil rights history - the northern side of the black freedom struggle. Biondi presents postwar New York as a battleground, no less than the Jim Crow South, for the fight against police brutality and discrimination in employment, housing, retail stores, and places of amusement. Men and women, trade unionists and religious leaders, integrationists and separatists, liberals and the Left come together in this pathbreaking study of America's largest and most cosmopolitan city. --Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham,, editor-in-chief of The Harvard Guide to African-American History To Stand and Fight brilliantly re-writes the history of postwar social movements in New York City. Martha Biondi has not only extended our view of the civil rights movement to the urban North, but she places the movement squarely within an international framework. She redefines the movement, focusing on the specific struggles that mattered: jobs, welfare, housing, police misconduct, political representation, and black people's ongoing battle for independence in the colonies. To Stand and Fight will stand out as a major contribution to an already burgeoning field of civil rights studies. --Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination To Stand and Fight establishes that New York was as important a battleground for racial equality as Montgomery or Birmingham. Martha Biondi has done a great service by uncovering the rich and largely forgotten history of New York's role in the African American freedom struggle. --Thomas J. Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit