Blacks in the New World

For decades the most racially repressive state in the nation fought bitterly and violently to maintain white supremacy. John Dittmer traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people, particularly courageous members of the black communities who were willing to put their lives on the line to establish basic human rights for all citizens of the state. Local People tells the whole grim story in depth for the first time, from the unsuccessful attempts of black World War II veterans to register to vote to the seating of a civil rights-oriented Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Particularly dramatic - and heartrending - is Dittmer's account of the tumultuous decade of the sixties: the freedom rides of 1961, which resulted in the imprisonment at Parchman of dozens of participants; the violent reactions to protests in McComb and Jackson and to voter registration drives in Greenwood and other cities; the riot in Oxford when James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss; the cowardly murder of long-time leader Medgar Evers; and the brutal Klan lynchings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Meier and Rudwick show how black history, originally a Jim Crow specialty ignored by nearly the entire historical profession, has evolved into one of the liveliest and most active areas of study. A remarkable self-examination of the authors' own profession, this volume blends research in primary and secondary sources with extensive interviews of nearly 200 scholars--including the most highly respected names in the field.

Originally presented at a symposium jointly sponsored by the United States Historical Society and the U.S. Congress, these essays show how the changes that accompanied the War for Independence reshaped the structure of black society in British mainland, North America and throughout the Western slaveholding world. They explore the development of racial slavery and freedom in the North, the Chesapeake, the lowcountry South and the Southwestern frontier and note how the distinctive nature of colonial slavery and events of the Revolutionary era altered black life. Focusing on the black family and black religion, they view these patterns from an institutional perspective and also provide a broad overview of the American Revolution as it was experienced by l8th century black Americans, as well as the worldwide implications of the racial transformations. ISBN 0-8139-0969-4 : $15.95.