Historian Litwack constructs an account of life in the Jim Crow South. Drawing on an array of contemporary documents and first-person narratives from both blacks and whites, he examines how black men and women learned to live with the severe restrictions imposed on their lives during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Litwack relates how black schools and colleges struggled to fulfill the expectations placed on them in a climate that...

They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal...

In 1954, the Supreme Court rejected the notion of "separate by equal" facilities in the famous BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION decision. Highlighting the efforts of both blacks and whites to promote racial equality in the face of violent attempts to preserve white supremacy, Author David K. Fremon shows how segregation made the South a caste system. He traces the history of racial discrimination from the end of the Civil War through the Jim Crow era of...

"This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation. Here, you will...

A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. Journalist Lemann describes an insurgency that changed the course of American history: from 1873 to 1877 white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods,...

The author's own assessment of his project and its usefulness could hardly be improved upon: ""Readers of all faiths and persuasions are invited. The segregationist reader may choose to look upon the book as a compilation of evidence that he does indeed have some very resourceful people on his side, working diligently to keep the Negro 'in his place'; the integrationist reader may find it valuable as a sort of intelligence report on The Enemy; and...