Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma - Softcover

Thornton III, J. Mills

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817352996 ISBN 13: 9780817352998

Publisher: University Alabama Press, 2006

Synopsis

A landmark book on the struggle for racial equality in America. With this bold offering from two decades of research, J. Mills Thornton III presents the story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of community-municipal history at the grassroots level. Thornton demonstrates that the movement had powerful local sources in its three birth cities--Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma.  There, the arcane mechanisms of state and city governance and the missteps of municipal politicians and civic leaders--independent of emerging national trends in racial mores--led to the great swell of energy for change that became the civil rights movement. 

About this title

About the Author:

J. Mills Thornton III is Professor of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and author of Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800?1860.

Review:

"Superbly researched, forcefully presented, and clearly one of the most important works on the history of the Modern South.""-- American Historical Review"

""Dividing Lines" succeeds admirably in highlighting the importance of municipal politics in influencing the contours of the movements for racial equality and shaping their local outcomes. In placing divisions among whites and especially blacks near the center of the story and in portraying black moderates in a favorable light, it challenges more heroic and moralistic accounts of the movement. It also reminds us that the moral crusade against Jim Crow was a political crusade and that politics, even in a good cause, is often a messy business. . . . This is an important, deeply researched, provocative, and often compelling book that will supplement, if not replace, many of our standard accounts of the modern civil rights movement.""-- The Nation"

About this edition

• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0817352996
• ISBN 13: 9780817352998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 748