Download or read book To Be Born Black in Mississippi written by Kenneth Mayfield and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You are about to read the story of a young black man from Okolona, Mississippi who was kicked out of Mississippi's flagship university for protesting against racial discrimination. This journey shows Ole Miss as it was during the 1960s after it was forcibly integrated in a violent struggle that resulted in two people being killed, and it also shows how years after Ole Miss was desegregated, blacks were still not allowed to be on the faculty, barred from participation in sports and subjected to harassment and discrimination by the faculty and students. This narrative also chronicles the typical life for blacks in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Era from the 1950s to the 1970s.I was one of eight black students who was kicked out of Ole Miss in 1970 for “disorderly conduct” because we stood up and fought against racism. All eight of our lives were affected in different ways, but for most of us we were able to pick up the pieces and make something positive out of a bad situation. For me, I was an honor student at Ole Miss and had already decided to pursue law as a profession even before I enrolled at Ole Miss. My experiences at Ole Miss prompted me to become a Civil Rights Attorney in order to fight against racial discrimination and injustices in Mississippi.Ole Miss is located about an hour's drive from Okolona, but this was not the reason I wanted to attend. Nor did I attend because I was a radical or wanted to break down barriers of discrimination. I chose to attend Ole Miss in order to get a good education from Mississippi's finest university in hopes of becoming an affluent lawyer who would spend his good life in California, but my journey ended quite differently. I got caught up in the struggle during my second year of college, and before I knew it, I was a black militant whose mission was to end racial discrimination at Ole Miss “by any means necessary”. As a black militant, I burned every confederate flag I could get my hands on and even conspired to burn buildings. I was a bona fide black militant, was proud of my militancy and to make sure that everyone knew I always wore an African dashiki, combat boots, dark shades and black beret. As a black militant at Ole Miss, I now confess that I was full of rage and anger and committed acts that were serious, dangerous and even unlawful. I was angry with Ole Miss, the State of Mississippi, the United States of America and even God.In the fall of 1970, after we were thrown out of Ole Miss, I enrolled at Tougaloo College near Jackson, Mississippi where I graduated as an honor student in 1971. After college I enrolled in the expedited law school program at the University of Michigan Law School and graduated from there in 2 years at the age of 22. Immediately after graduation from law school, I returned to Mississippi to re-engage in the Civil Rights struggle with plans of engaging in Civil Rights for two years.When I returned to Mississippi to practice Civil Rights, the rage and anger that I experienced at Ole Miss was re-ignited; however, I decided that I was going to do everything according to the law. This was after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barring employment discrimination, the Civil Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited discrimination in voting and the Housing Acting of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing, yet Mississippi was still trying to hold onto its past racist ways. I was prepared to sue anybody or any institution that discriminated against or mistreated blacks. The first lawsuit that I filed was against the owner of an office building in Tupelo where I eventually located my office on Main Street in Tupelo, Mississippi. Fear was not a factor with me. I was like a patriotic soldier who was willing to put his life on the line for the greater good.
Download or read book Coming of Age in Mississippi written by Anne Moody and published by Dell. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement—a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person’s ability to affect change. “Anne Moody’s autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage.”—Chicago Tribune Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was . . . the fear of being killed just because I was black.” In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life. A straight-A student who realized her dream of going to college when she won a basketball scholarship, she finally dared to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC, she experienced firsthand the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement—and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs, and deadly force that were used to destroy it. A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation’s destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the footsoldiers in the civil rights movement. Praise for Coming of Age in Mississippi “A history of our time, seen from the bottom up, through the eyes of someone who decided for herself that things had to be changed . . . a timely reminder that we cannot now relax.”—Senator Edward Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review “Something is new here . . . rural southern black life begins to speak. It hits the page like a natural force, crude and undeniable and, against all principles of beauty, beautiful.”—The Nation “Engrossing, sensitive, beautiful . . . so candid, so honest, and so touching, as to make it virtually impossible to put down.”—San Francisco Sun-Reporter
Download or read book Black Life on the Mississippi written by Thomas C. Buchanan and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-03-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All along the Mississippi--on country plantation landings, urban levees and quays, and the decks of steamboats--nineteenth-century African Americans worked and fought for their liberty amid the slave trade and the growth of the cotton South. Offering a counternarrative to Twain's well-known tale from the perspective of the pilothouse, Thomas C. Buchanan paints a more complete picture of the Mississippi, documenting the rich variety of experiences among slaves and free blacks who lived and worked on the lower decks and along the river during slavery, through the Civil War, and into emancipation. Buchanan explores the creative efforts of steamboat workers to link riverside African American communities in the North and South. The networks African Americans created allowed them to keep in touch with family members, help slaves escape, transfer stolen goods, and provide forms of income that were important to the survival of their communities. The author also details the struggles that took place within the steamboat work culture. Although the realities of white supremacy were still potent on the river, Buchanan shows how slaves, free blacks, and postemancipation freedpeople fought for better wages and treatment. By exploring the complex relationship between slavery and freedom, Buchanan sheds new light on the ways African Americans resisted slavery and developed a vibrant culture and economy up and down America's greatest river.
Download or read book Beaches Blood and Ballots written by James Patterson Smith and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the first to focus on the integration of the Gulf Coast, is Dr. Gilbert R. Mason's eyewitness account of harrowing episodes that occurred there during the civil rights movement. Newly opened by court order, documents from the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission's secret files enhance this riveting memoir written by a major civil rights figure in Mississippi. He joined his friends and allies Aaron Henry and the martyred Medgar Evers to combat injustices in one of the nation's most notorious bastions of segregation. In Mississippi, the civil rights struggle began in May 1959 with "w
Download or read book Sons of Mississippi written by Paul Hendrickson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-02-18 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They stand as unselfconscious as if the photograph were being taken at a church picnic and not during one of the pitched battles of the civil rights struggle. None of them knows that the image will appear in Life magazine or that it will become an icon of its era. The year is 1962, and these seven white Mississippi lawmen have gathered to stop James Meredith from integrating the University of Mississippi. One of them is swinging a billy club. More than thirty years later, award-winning journalist and author Paul Hendrickson sets out to discover who these men were, what happened to them after the photograph was taken, and how racist attitudes shaped the way they lived their lives. But his ultimate focus is on their children and grandchildren, and how the prejudice bequeathed by the fathers was transformed, or remained untouched, in the sons. Sons of Mississippi is a scalding yet redemptive work of social history, a book of eloquence and subtlely that tracks the movement of racism across three generations and bears witness to its ravages among both black and white Americans.
Download or read book A Black Physician s Story written by Douglas L. Conner and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1985 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The autobiography of a black doctor in white Mississippi during the Jim Crow era and the fierce struggle for civil rights
Download or read book Local People written by John Dittmer and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people to establish basic human rights for all citizens of Mississippi
Download or read book Mississippi Black History Makers written by George A. Sewell and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1984-11 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-researched collection of biographical sketches of notable African Americans from Mississippi
Download or read book Your Mississippi written by John Knox Bettersworth and published by . This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A textbook tracing the history of Mississippi from the arrival of the early settlers to the present day.
Download or read book Mississippi Morning written by Ruth Vander Zee and published by Eerdmans Young Readers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in 1933 Mississippi, this thought-provoking story about a young boy who lives in an environment of racial hatred will challenge young readers to question their own assumptions and confront personal decisions. Full color.
Download or read book A Little Taste of Freedom written by Emilye Crosby and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-05-26 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this long-term community study of the freedom movement in rural, majority-black Claiborne County, Mississippi, Emilye Crosby explores the impact of the African American freedom struggle on small communities in general and questions common assumptions that are based on the national movement. The legal successes at the national level in the mid 1960s did not end the movement, Crosby contends, but rather emboldened people across the South to initiate waves of new actions around local issues. Escalating assertiveness and demands of African Americans--including the reality of armed self-defense--were critical to ensuring meaningful local change to a remarkably resilient system of white supremacy. In Claiborne County, a highly effective boycott eventually led the Supreme Court to affirm the legality of economic boycotts for political protest. NAACP leader Charles Evers (brother of Medgar) managed to earn seemingly contradictory support from the national NAACP, the segregationist Sovereignty Commission, and white liberals. Studying both black activists and the white opposition, Crosby employs traditional sources and more than 100 oral histories to analyze the political and economic issues in the postmovement period, the impact of the movement and the resilience of white supremacy, and the ways these issues are closely connected to competing histories of the community.
Download or read book Church Street written by Grace Sweet and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1930s and 1940s saw unprecedented prosperity for the African Americans of Jackson's Church Street. From the first black millionaire in the United States to defenders of civil rights, nearly all of Jackson's black professionals lived on Church Street. It was one of the most popular places to see and be seen, whether that meant spotting Louis Armstrong strolling out of the Crystal Palace Club or Martin Luther King Jr. organizing an NAACP meeting at his field office on nearby Farish Street. Join authors and veterans of Church Street Grace Sweet and Benjamin Bradley as they explore the astounding history and legacy of Church Street.
Download or read book Born Black in the U S A written by John Jordan and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2014-06-09 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African-Americans had seen their fortunes ride a sea of change ever since the first Africans set foot on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The onset of plantation-based economies in the South meant that they were to be held at all cost to the land; and the less they know of their rights and fight for them, the better for the plantation and slaveowners. That, however, was bound to be addressed by people from their own ranks, as well as white men who are aware of the evil and inhumanity of the conditions they were consigned to. In Born Black in the USA, we trace such developments, perhaps culminating in the presidency of Barack Obama. Yet, there is that nagging questions at the end: Has discrimination really ended in the USA?
Download or read book Dark Journey written by Neil R. McMillen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remarkable for its relentless truth-telling, and the depth and thoroughness of its investigation, for the freshness of its sources, and for the shock power of its findings. Even a reader who is not unfamiliar with the sources and literature of the subject can be jolted by its impact."--C. Vann Woodward, New York Review of Books "Dark Journey is a superb piece of scholarship, a book that all students of southern and African-American history will find valuable and informative."--David J. Garrow, Georgia Historical Quarterly
Download or read book Hattiesburg written by William Sturkey and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize Benjamin L. Hooks Award Finalist “An insightful, powerful, and moving book.” —Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice “Sturkey’s clear-eyed and meticulous book pulls off a delicate balancing act. While depicting the terrors of Jim Crow, he also shows how Hattiesburg’s black residents, forced to forge their own communal institutions, laid the organizational groundwork for the civil rights movement.” —New York Times If you really want to understand Jim Crow—what it was and how African Americans rose up to defeat it—you should start by visiting Mobile Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the heart of the historic black downtown. There you can still see remnants of the shops and churches where, amid the violence and humiliation of segregation, men and women gathered to build a remarkable community. Hattiesburg takes us into the heart of this divided town and deep into the lives of families on both sides of the racial divide to show how the fabric of their existence was shaped by the changing fortunes of the Jim Crow South. “Sturkey’s magnificent portrait reminds us that Mississippi is no anachronism. It is the dark heart of American modernity.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk “When they are at their best, historians craft powerful, compelling, often genre-changing pieces of history...William Sturkey is one of those historians...A brilliant, poignant work.” —Charles W. McKinney, Jr., Journal of African American History
Download or read book Development Arrested written by Clyde Woods and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of a classic history of the Mississippi River Delta Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the 200-year-old conflict between African American workers and the planters of the Mississippi Delta. The book measures the impact of the plantation system on those who suffered its depredations firsthand, while tracing the decline and resurrection of plantation ideology in national public policy debate. Despite countless defeats under the planter regime, African Americans in the Delta continued to push forward their agenda for social and economic justice. Throughout this remarkably interdisciplinary book, ranging across fields as diverse as rural studies, musicology, development studies, and anthropology, Woods demonstrates the role of music—including jazz, rock and roll, soul, rap and, above all, the blues—in sustaining a radical vision of social change.
Download or read book Born of Conviction written by Joseph T. Reiff and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1963, twenty-eight white Methodist ministers caused a firestorm of controversy by publishing a statement of support for race relations change. Born of Conviction explores the statement's resulting influences on their lives, their reasons for signing the statement, and the various interpretations and legacies of the document.
