The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America - Issues in Historiography by Kevern Verney Paperback

About the Book

Book Synopsis

This book examines the historiography of the African American freedom struggle from the 1890s to the present. It considers how, and why, the study of African American history developed from being a marginalized subject in American universities and colleges at the start of the twentieth century to become one of the most extensively researched fields in American history today.

There is analysis of the changing scholarly interpretations of African American leaders from Booker T. Washington through to Barack Obama. The impact and significance of the leading civil rights organizations are assessed, as well as the white segregationists who opposed them and the civil rights policies of presidential administrations from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump.

The civil rights struggle is also discussed in the context of wider, political, social and economic changes in the United States and developments in popular culture.

From the Back Cover

Once a neglected area, African American history is now the subject of extensive scholarly research. This revised and expanded edition of The debate on Black Civil Rights in America examines the changing academic debates on African American history from the 1890s to the present.
Individual chapters focus on historical periods from the spread of racial segregation in the 1890s through to the post-war Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Concluding chapters assess the modern black experience and developments in race relations during the Obama and Trump administrations.

The volume assesses the central debates on key events, civil rights organizations, and individuals in black history, including all major African American leaders from Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey through to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. White segregationists who opposed advances in black civil rights are also examined, together with key decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, the civil rights policies of presidential administrations, and race in American popular culture. The book highlights the extent to which the ideas of historians have been shaped not just by scholarly research, but also by their personal life experiences and developments in U.S. race relations since the end of the nineteenth century.

The debate on Black Civil Rights in America provides a critical appraisal of existing scholarship on African American history and provides invaluable insights into how and why the changing interpretations of historians have evolved over time.

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