The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling was a watershed event in the fight against racial segregation in the United States. The recent fiftieth anniversary of Brown prompted a surge of tributes: books, television and radio specials, conferences, and speeches. At the same time, says James C. Cobb, it revealed a growing trend of dismissiveness and negativity toward Brown and other accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Writing as both a lauded historian and a white southerner from the last generation to grow up under southern apartheid, Cobb responds to what he sees as distortions of Brown’s legacy and their implied disservice to those whom it inspired and empowered. Cobb begins by looking at how our historical understanding of segregation has evolved since the Brown decision. In particular, he targets the tenacious misconception that racial discrimination was at odds with economic modernization--and so would have faded out, on its own, under market pressures. He then looks at the argument that Brown energized white resistance more than it fomented civil rights progress. This position overstates the pace and extent of racial change in the South prior to Brown, Cobb says, while it understates Brown’s role in catalyzing and legitimizing subsequent black protest. Finally, Cobb suggests that the Brown decree and the civil rights movement accomplished not only more than certain critics have acknowledged but also more than the hard statistics of black progress can reveal. The destruction of Jim Crow, with its “denial of belonging,” allowed African Americans to embrace their identity as southerners in ways that freed them to explore links between their southernness and their blackness. This is an important and timely reminder of “what the Brown court and the activists who took the spirit of its ruling into the streets were up against, both historically and contemporaneously.”
In this sweeping narrative, Cobb covers such diverse topics as "Dixiecrats," the "southern strategy," the South's domination of today's GOP, immigration, the national ascendance of southern culture and music, and the roles of women and an increasingly visible gay population in contemporary southern life. Beginning with the early stages of the civil rights struggle, Cobb discusses how the attack on Pearl Harbor set the stage for the demise of Jim Crow. He examines the NAACP's postwar assault on the South's racial system, the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, the emergence of Rev. Martin Luther King in the movement, and the dramatic protests and confrontations that finally brought profound racial changes, and two-party politics to the South.
Georgia Odyssey is a lively survey of the state’s history, from its beginnings as a European colony to its current standing as an international business mecca, from the self-imposed isolation of its Jim Crow era to its role as host of the centennial Olympic Games and beyond, from its long reign as the linchpin state of the Democratic Solid South to its current dominance by the Republican Party. This new edition incorporates current trends that have placed Georgia among the country’s most dynamic and attractive states, fueled the growth of its Hispanic and Asian American populations, and otherwise dramatically altered its demographic, economic, social, and cultural appearance and persona. “The constantly shifting cultural landscape of contemporary Georgia,” writes James C. Cobb, “presents a jumbled panorama of anachronism, contradiction, contrast, and peculiarity.” A Georgia native, Cobb delights in debunking familiar myths about his state as he brings its past to life and makes it relevant to today. Not all of that past is pleasant to recall, Cobb notes. Moreover, not all of today’s Georgians are as unequivocal as the tobacco farmer who informed a visiting journalist in 1938 that “we Georgians are Georgian as hell.” That said, a great many Georgians, both natives and new arrivals, care deeply about the state’s identity and consider it integral to their own. Georgia Odyssey is the ideal introduction to our past and a unique and often provocative look at the interaction of that past with our present and future.
Cobb, "surveys the remarkable story of southern identity and its persistence in the face of sweeping changes in the South's economy, society and political structure."--dust jacket.
In this unique synthesis of political, cultural, and intellectual history, James C. Cobb spans more than two centuries in tracing the origins and development of the South as not just an exception to the national rule, but as an internal 'other' against which American nationhood was defined.
From the Great Depression to the Sunbelt Era the South has pursued industrial development as the remedy for its economic ills. The mixed results of this ongoing crusade are chronicled in this path-breaking study, updated to 1990, in which James Cobb examines the expectations, achievements, and side effects of the dive for southern industrialization.
In the early 1960s, civil rights activists and the Kennedy administration engaged in parallel, though not always complementary, efforts to overcome Mississippi’s extreme opposition to racial desegregation. In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960–1964, James P. Marshall uncovers this history through primary source documents that explore the legal and political strategies of the federal government, follows the administration’s changing and sometimes contentious relationship with civil rights organizations, and reveals the tactics used by local and state entities in Mississippi to stem the advancement of racial equality. A historian and longtime civil rights activist, Marshall collects a vast array of documents from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and excerpts from his own 1960s interviews with leading figures in the movement for racial justice. This volume tracks early forms of resistance to racial parity adopted by the White Citizens’ Councils and chapters of the Ku Klux Klan at the local level as well as by Mississippi congressmen and other elected officials who used both legal obstructionism and extra-legal actions to block efforts meant to promote integration. Quoting from interviews and correspondence among the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members, government officials, and other constituents of the Democratic Party, Marshall also explores decisions about voter registration drives and freedom rides as well as formal efforts by the Kennedy administration—including everything from minority hiring initiatives to federal litigation and party platform changes—to exert pressure on Mississippi to end segregation. Through a carefully curated selection of letters, interviews, government records, and legal documents, The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration, 1960–1964 sheds new light on the struggle to advance racial justice for African Americans living in the Magnolia State.
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling was a watershed event in the fight against racial segregation in the United States. The recent fiftieth anniversary of Brown prompted a surge of tributes: books, television and radio specials, conferences, and speeches. At the same time, says James C. Cobb, it revealed a growing trend of dismissiveness and negativity toward Brown and other accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Writing as both a lauded historian and a white southerner from the last generation to grow up under southern apartheid, Cobb responds to what he sees as distortions of Brown’s legacy and their implied disservice to those whom it inspired and empowered. Cobb begins by looking at how our historical understanding of segregation has evolved since the Brown decision. In particular, he targets the tenacious misconception that racial discrimination was at odds with economic modernization--and so would have faded out, on its own, under market pressures. He then looks at the argument that Brown energized white resistance more than it fomented civil rights progress. This position overstates the pace and extent of racial change in the South prior to Brown, Cobb says, while it understates Brown’s role in catalyzing and legitimizing subsequent black protest. Finally, Cobb suggests that the Brown decree and the civil rights movement accomplished not only more than certain critics have acknowledged but also more than the hard statistics of black progress can reveal. The destruction of Jim Crow, with its “denial of belonging,” allowed African Americans to embrace their identity as southerners in ways that freed them to explore links between their southernness and their blackness. This is an important and timely reminder of “what the Brown court and the activists who took the spirit of its ruling into the streets were up against, both historically and contemporaneously.”
Cobb, "surveys the remarkable story of southern identity and its persistence in the face of sweeping changes in the South's economy, society and political structure."--dust jacket.
In 1960, Mississippi society still drew a sharp line between its African American and white communities. In the 1890s, the state had created a repressive racial system that ensured white supremacy by legally segregating black residents and removing their basic citizenship and voting rights. Over the ensuing decades, white residents suppressed African Americans who dared challenge that system with an array of violence, terror, and murder. In 1960, students supporting civil rights moved into Mississippi and challenged this repressive racial order by encouraging African Americans to reassert the rights guaranteed them under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The ensuing social upheaval changed the state forever. In Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi, James P. Marshall, a former civil rights activist, tells the complete story of the quest for civil rights in Mississippi. Using a voluminous array of sources as well as his own memories, Marshall weaves together an astonishing account of student protestors and local activists who risked their lives for equality, standing between southern resistance and federal inaction. Their efforts, and the horrific violence inflicted on them, helped push many non-southerners and the federal government into action, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act—measures that destroyed legalized segregation and disfranchisement. Ultimately, Marshall contends, student activism in Mississippi helped forge a consensus by reminding the American public of its forgotten promises and by educating the nation that African Americans in the South deserved to live as free and equal citizens.
In this unique synthesis of political, cultural, and intellectual history, James C. Cobb spans more than two centuries in tracing the origins and development of the South as not just an exception to the national rule, but as an internal 'other' against which American nationhood was defined.
In this sweeping narrative, Cobb covers such diverse topics as "Dixiecrats," the "southern strategy," the South's domination of today's GOP, immigration, the national ascendance of southern culture and music, and the roles of women and an increasingly visible gay population in contemporary southern life. Beginning with the early stages of the civil rights struggle, Cobb discusses how the attack on Pearl Harbor set the stage for the demise of Jim Crow. He examines the NAACP's postwar assault on the South's racial system, the famous bus boycott in Montgomery, the emergence of Rev. Martin Luther King in the movement, and the dramatic protests and confrontations that finally brought profound racial changes, and two-party politics to the South.
From the Great Depression to the Sunbelt Era the South has pursued industrial development as the remedy for its economic ills. The mixed results of this ongoing crusade are chronicled in this path-breaking study, updated to 1990, in which James Cobb examines the expectations, achievements, and side effects of the dive for southern industrialization.
Georgia Odyssey is a lively survey of the state’s history, from its beginnings as a European colony to its current standing as an international business mecca, from the self-imposed isolation of its Jim Crow era to its role as host of the centennial Olympic Games and beyond, from its long reign as the linchpin state of the Democratic Solid South to its current dominance by the Republican Party. This new edition incorporates current trends that have placed Georgia among the country’s most dynamic and attractive states, fueled the growth of its Hispanic and Asian American populations, and otherwise dramatically altered its demographic, economic, social, and cultural appearance and persona. “The constantly shifting cultural landscape of contemporary Georgia,” writes James C. Cobb, “presents a jumbled panorama of anachronism, contradiction, contrast, and peculiarity.” A Georgia native, Cobb delights in debunking familiar myths about his state as he brings its past to life and makes it relevant to today. Not all of that past is pleasant to recall, Cobb notes. Moreover, not all of today’s Georgians are as unequivocal as the tobacco farmer who informed a visiting journalist in 1938 that “we Georgians are Georgian as hell.” That said, a great many Georgians, both natives and new arrivals, care deeply about the state’s identity and consider it integral to their own. Georgia Odyssey is the ideal introduction to our past and a unique and often provocative look at the interaction of that past with our present and future.
THE time is 1797. The armies of the French Revolution have swept over Europe, leaving Britain’s eight million people to stand alone against populations totaling more than fifty million. On the Continent an enormous invasion force is massing; while in England the country is nearly bankrupt and popular discontent is so widespread that the monarchy itself is in danger and the possibility of a British Republic looms. At the height of the crisis, the British fleet mutinies in protest against poor pay, impossible living conditions, short and inedible rations, brutality and impressment, leaving England completely vulnerable to her enemies. Over 50,000 men serving in 113 ships refuse orders, expel their officers and set up ship democracy in the longest and largest naval insurrection in history. Their revolt becomes both a symptom and a cause of the internal dissension that wracks their country and in THE GREAT MUTINY, provides the focus for a panoramic view of Georgian England. Here are the great names of the time: mad George III, gobbling his breakfast oatmeal and embarking on a twenty-mile stag chase while half his fleet was lowering the royal standard: his Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger; the opposition leader in Parliament, Charles James Fox; Captain William Bligh of Bounty fame; the young Bonaparte; and Winston Churchill’s great-great-grandfather, the Second Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty.
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