In this lavishly illustrated volume, Sean Dennis Cashman surveys the
history of civil rights in twentieth-century America. The book charts
the principal course of civil rights against the dramatic backdrop of
two world wars, the Great Depression, the affluent society of the
postwar world, the cultural and social agitation of the 1960s, and the
emergence of the new conservatism of the 1970s and 1980s.
Cashman describes the profound upheaval that African-Americans
experienced as they moved from the outright racism of the South through
the Great Migration northward from 1915, and sets the contribution of
African-American leaders within their historical context: Booker T.
Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Randolph, Malcolm
X, Martin Luther King, and many others. The work also describes the
shift in emphasis in the movement from legal cases brought before the
courts to mass protest movements and, later, the change in direction
from civil rights to Black Power and, later, Pan-Africanism.
Far more than just a history of civil rights leaders, this book explains
how the achievements of African-American writers, artists, singers, and
athletes contributed to a wider understanding of the humanity and
culture of black Americans. Cashman details, among others, the
achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, the films of Paul Robeson and
Marian Anderson, and the works of Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, James
Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. Written in an engaging style, the text is
accompanied by a wealth of illustrations, some well known, others in
print for the first time.
