Inside agitators : white southerners in the Civil Rights Movement
David L. Chappell (Author)
How did the vastly outnumbered black Southerners in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s succeed against a white power structure that seemed uniformly hostile? Contrary to widespread belief, argues David Chappell, "inside agitators"--White southerners sympathetic to the cause of desegregation - played a crucial role. Chappell shows how years of experience gave black southerners unique insights into the strengths and weaknesses of "their" white folks. These insights helped black leaders not only to enlist the help of white liberals and moderates but also to manipulate hard-line segregationists into behavior that was often politically self-destructive. In short, Chappell contends, black southerners defeated segregation because they understood white southerners better than segregationists did
Print Book, English, 1996
Johns Hopkins paperbacks edition View all formats and editions
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1996
History
xxvii, 303 pages ; 24 cm
9780801852343, 080185234X
1101339590
1: The strange career of racial dissent in the South
The "silent South": the founding Fathers of Southern white dissent
From silence to futility: Southern white dissent gets organized
2: The strategy of nonviolence and the role of white Southerns in the movement
The Montgomery bus boycott, 1955-1956
Tallahassee, 1956-1957
Little Rock, 1957-1959
Albany, Georgia, 1961-1962
3: The art of the possible: the white Southerner in the national state
The late 1950s: saving the party from civil rights
Lyndon Johnson takes center stage
and then an intermission
Policy in high gear: from the Justice Department to the Acts of 1964 and 1965
Interpreting the movement
Originally published: 1994