This volume's contributors expand the chronology and geography of the black freedom struggle beyond the traditional emphasis on the Jim Crow South and the years between 1954 and 1968. Beginning as far back as the nineteenth century, and analyzing case studies from southern, northern, and border states, the essays in The Seedtime, the Work, and the Harvest incorporate communities and topics not usually linked to the African American civil rights movement.
The collection opens with a biographical sketch of Thomas DeSaille Tucker, an educational pioneer who served as the first president of Florida State Normal and Industrial School for Colored Students. It then highlights the work of black women, including Bostonian publisher Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, who defied local governments during the Progressive Era by disseminating medical information and providing access to medical professionals. Next, the collection explores the life and work of Norfolk civil rights attorney James F. Gay, who helped to democratize the political establishment in Virginia’s largest city but became a victim of his own success. The collection then moves to York, Pennsylvania, to examine a 1969 riot that went mostly unnoticed until the town's mayor was charged—more than thirty years later—with the riot-related murder of Lillie Belle Allen. Also featured is an essay examining the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's "Food for Freedom" campaign that aimed to complement voter registration work in Mississippi by providing everyday sustenance to African Americans.
Addressing more recent issues, this volume considers the politics of public memory in Baltimore, Maryland, a city divided by racial "riots" in 1968 and in 2015. It then examines the Black Lives Matter movement that gained international attention for its response to Michael Brown's death at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the Sandra Bland Movement inspired by the arrest of Bland and her subsequent death in the Waller County jail in rural Texas. These chapters connect the activism of today—shaped in so many ways by social media, student activism, and grassroots organization—to a deeply historical, wide-ranging fight for equality.
A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, professor of history at Sam Houston State University, is coauthor of Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk’s Public Schools. Reginald K. Ellis, associate professor of history at Florida A&M University, is the author of Between Washington and Du Bois: The Racial Politics of James Edward Shepard. Peter B. Levy, professor of history at York College, is the author of Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Foreword ix
Introduction 1
Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Reginald K. Ellis, and Peter B. Levy
1. Florida State Normal and Industrial School for Coloreds: Thomas DeSaille Tucker and His Radical Approach to Black Higher Education 10
Reginald K. Ellis
2. African American Women and Community Medicine: Civil Rights Workers in the Age of “Self-Help” 28
Teresa Blue Holden
3. Southern Discomfort: The Rise and Fall of Civil Rights Attorney James F. Gay, 1942–2008 53
Jeffrey L. Littlejohn and Charles H. Ford
4. Revisiting the Urban Revolts of the 1960s: York, Pennsylvania—A Case Study 84
Peter B. Levy
5. “What We Eat Is Politics”: SNCC, Hunger, and Voting Rights in Mississippi 115
Mary Potorti
6. Riot, Revolution, or Rebellion? Civil Rights and the Politics of Memory 154
Rosie Jayde Uyola
7. Ferguson, USA: A Scholar’s Unforeseen Connection and Collision with History 183
Stefan M. Bradley
8. Religion and the Black Freedom Struggle for Sandra Bland 197
Phillip Luke Sinitiere
Afterword: Bearing Witness; How the Movement Changed My World 227
Waldo Martin
List of Contributors 231
Index 233
Contributors
