Defining the struggle
Subtitle: national organizing for racial justice, 1880-1915
By: Susan D. Carle
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 404
ISBN-13: 9780199945740
Subjects: Civil rights lawyers; Civil rights movements; African Americans; Legal status, laws; History
Description: "Since its founding in 1910--the same year as another national organization devoted to the economic and social welfare aspects of race advancement, the National Urban League--the NAACP has been viewed as the vanguard national civil rights organization in American history. But these two flagship institutions were not the first important national organizations devoted to advancing the cause of racial justice. Instead, it was even earlier groups -- including the National Afro American League, the National Afro American Council, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement - that developed and transmitted to the NAACP and National Urban League foundational ideas about law and lawyering that these latter organizations would then pursue. With unparalleled scholarly depth, Defining the Struggle explores these forerunner organizations whose contributions in shaping early twentieth century national civil rights organizing have largely been forgotten today. It examines the motivations of their leaders, the initiatives they undertook, and the ideas about law and racial justice activism they developed and passed on to future generations. In so doing, it sheds new light on how these early origins helped set the path for twentieth century legal civil rights activism in the United States." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-387) and index.
Table of contents: title: A new generation of post-reconstruction leaders; title: The legal and political vision of T. Thomas Fortune, founder of the Afro-American League, 1880-1890; title: The National Afro-American League's founding and law-related work, 1887-1895; title: The dispute between the "Radicals" and the "Accommodationists" within the Afro-American Council : Reverdy Ransom and Booker T. Washington's contrasting visions of racial justice, 1895-1902; title: The Afro-American Council's internal history, 1898-1908; title: "Should not a nation be just to all of her citizens?" : the Afro-American Council's legal work, 1898-1908; title: "Unity in diversity" : the National Association of Colored Women's dual social welfare and civil rights agenda, 1895-1910; title: Asserting "manhood" rights : the Niagara Movement's first year, 1905; title: The beginnings of twentieth-century protest in the Niagara Movement's experience, 1906-1909; title: Atlanta and New York City; founding the National Urban League; title: Founding the NAACP : building the organization, 1908-1915; title: Building the NAACP's legal agenda, 1910-1915.