Robert J. Norrell's Books

Up from History

The Life of Booker T. Washington

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Robert J. Norrell

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Up from History

The Life of Booker T. Washington

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Robert J. Norrell

Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, WashingtonÕs strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of WashingtonÕs vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.

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Page Count

523

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674060377

ISBN 13

9780674060371

The House I Live In

Race in the American Century

By: Robert J. Norrell

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The House I Live In

Race in the American Century

By: Robert J. Norrell

In The House I Live In, award-winning historian Robert J. Norrell offers a truly masterful chronicle of American race relations over the last one hundred and fifty years. This scrupulously fair and insightful narrative--the most ambitious and wide-ranging history of its kind--sheds new light on the ideologies, from white supremacy to black nationalism, that have shaped race relations since the Civil War. Norrell argues that it is these ideologies, more than politics or economics, that have sculpted the landscape of race in America. Beginning with Reconstruction, he shows how the democratic values of liberty and equality were infused with new meaning by Abraham Lincoln, only to become meaningless for generations of African Americans as the white supremacy movement took shape. The heart of the book paints a vivid portrait of the long, often dangerous struggle of the Civil Rights movement to overcome decades of accepted inequality. Norrell offers fresh appraisals of key Civil Rights figures and dissects the ideas of racists. He offers striking new insights into black-white history, observing for instance that the Civil Rights movement really began as early as the 1930s, and that contrary to much recent writing, the Cold War was a setback rather than a boost to the quest for racial justice. He also breaks new ground on the role of popular culture and mass media in first promoting, but later helping defeat, notions of white supremacy. Though the struggle for equality is far from over, Norrell writes that today we are closer than ever to fulfilling the promise of our democratic values. The House I Live In gives readers the first full understanding of how far we have come.

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Page Count

400

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190281855

ISBN 13

9780190281854

Up from History

The Life of Booker T. Washington

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Robert J. Norrell

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Up from History

The Life of Booker T. Washington

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Robert J. Norrell

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523

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Harvard University Press

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ISBN 10

0674060377

ISBN 13

9780674060371

Alex Haley and the Books That Changed a Nation

By: Robert J. Norrell

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Alex Haley and the Books That Changed a Nation

By: Robert J. Norrell

It is difficult to think of two twentieth century books by one author that have had as much influence on American culture when they were published as Alex Haley's monumental bestsellers, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Roots (1976). They changed the way white and black America viewed each other and the country's history. This first biography of Haley follows him from his childhood in relative privilege in deeply segregated small town Tennessee to fame and fortune in high powered New York City. It was in the Navy, that Haley discovered himself as a writer, which eventually led his rise as a star journalist in the heyday of magazine personality profiles. At Playboy Magazine, Haley profiled everyone from Martin Luther King and Miles Davis to Johnny Carson and Malcolm X, leading to their collaboration on The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Roots was for Haley a deeper, more personal reach. The subsequent book and miniseries ignited an ongoing craze for family history, and made Haley one of the most famous writers in the country. Roots sold half a million copies in the first two months of publication, and the original television miniseries was viewed by 130 million people. Haley died in 1992. This deeply researched and compelling book by Robert J. Norrell offers the perfect opportunity to revisit his authorship, his career as one of the first African American star journalists, as well as an especially dramatic time of change in American history.

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Page Count

274

Publisher

Macmillan + ORM

Published Date

ISBN 10

1466879319

ISBN 13

9781466879317

Like a Family

The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World

By: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,James L. Leloudis,Robert R. Korstad,Mary Murphy,Lu Ann Jones

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Like a Family

The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World

By: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,James L. Leloudis,Robert R. Korstad,Mary Murphy,Lu Ann Jones

Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable contribution to American social history. "The genius of Like a Family lies in its effortless integration of the history of the family--particularly women--into the history of the cotton-mill world.--Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review "Like a Family is history, folklore, and storytelling all rolled into one. It is a living, revelatory chronicle of life rarely observed by the academe. A powerhouse.--Studs Terkel "Here is labor history in intensely human terms. Neither great impersonal forces nor deadening statistics are allowed to get in the way of people. If students of the New South want both the dimensions and the feel of life and labor in the textile industry, this book will be immensely satisfying.--Choice

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Page Count

541

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807882941

ISBN 13

9780807882948

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

By: Robert J. Norrell

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How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

By: Robert J. Norrell

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace looks at how historical thinking shaped decisions for war and peace in Germany and the United States during the twentieth century. It examines the writing and public careers of the leading historians in each nation. Robert J. Norrell suggests it is useful to analyze where the discipline of history has succeeded and failed to understand war and the many attempts to institute lasting peace. The narrative of this book testifies to the avid commitment of historians, statesmen, and the public to understanding the past and how these lessons and perspectives can influence the present.

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666941972

ISBN 13

9781666941975

"Everybody was Black Down There"

Race and Industrial Change in the Alabama Coalfields

By: Robert H. Woodrum

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"Everybody was Black Down There"

Race and Industrial Change in the Alabama Coalfields

By: Robert H. Woodrum

In 1930 almost 13,000 African Americans worked in the coal mines around Birmingham, Alabama. They made up 53 percent of the mining workforce and some 60 percent of their union's local membership. At the close of the twentieth century, only about 15 percent of Birmingham's miners were black, and the entire mining workforce had been sharply reduced. Robert H. Woodrum offers a challenging interpretation of why this dramatic decline occurred and why it happened during an era of strong union presence in the Alabama coalfields. Drawing on union, company, and government records as well as interviews with coal miners, Woodrum examines the complex connections between racial ideology and technological and economic change. Extending the chronological scope of previous studies of race, work, and unionization in the Birmingham coalfields, Woodrum covers the New Deal, World War II, the postwar era, the 1970s expansion of coalfield employment, and contemporary trends toward globalization. The United Mine Workers of America's efforts to bridge the color line in places like Birmingham should not be underestimated, says Woodrum. Facing pressure from the wider world of segregationist Alabama, however, union leadership ultimately backed off the UMWA's historic commitment to the rights of its black members. Woodrum discusses the role of state UMWA president William Mitch in this process and describes Birmingham's unique economic circumstances as an essentially Rust Belt city within the burgeoning Sun Belt South. This is a nuanced exploration of how, despite their central role in bringing the UMWA back to Alabama in the early 1930s, black miners remained vulnerable to the economic and technological changes that transformed the coal industry after World War II.

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Page Count

332

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820328790

ISBN 13

9780820328799

We Want Jobs!

A Story of the Great Depression

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Norrelli

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We Want Jobs!

A Story of the Great Depression

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell,Norrelli

Uses the experiences of an unemployed steel worker and his family in Pittsburgh to descirbe the events of the economic depression that gripped the country from 1929 through 1933.

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Publisher

Raintree

Published Date

ISBN 10

0811472299

ISBN 13

9780811472296

Eden Rise

By: Robert Jeff Norrell

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Eden Rise

By: Robert Jeff Norrell

In Eden Rise Tom McKee, a white college freshman, returns to his home in the Alabama Black Belt in the summer of 1965 and becomes embroiled in a civil-rights conflict that divides his family, his town, and his own identity. His wealthy and powerful family is not prepared for the shocks that have followed the racial quake of the Selma March a few months earlier. Tom’s black college friend accompanies him home and gets caught in racial violence. Coming to his friend’s defense, Tom earns the enmity of segregationist neighbors. He feels both the hot anger of his father for his racial nonconformity and the determined defense of his mother and grandmother, as he witnesses the corrosive effects of the turmoil on his parents’ marriage. Attempting to rescue him are a cousin he never knew and a wily old lawyer who meet dangers and legal challenges that force Tom to confront the truth of his legacy.

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Page Count

290

Publisher

NewSouth Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1603061940

ISBN 13

9781603061940

Dictionary of American History

Supplement

By: Robert H. Ferrell,Joan Hoff

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Dictionary of American History

Supplement

By: Robert H. Ferrell,Joan Hoff

In 757 articles, of which 469 are on new topics, this supplement attempts to cover recent monumental changes in American civilization from the impact of foreign affairs, through domestic political events, Supreme Court decisions, medical and scientific discoveries, social changes, popular cultural evolution, and religious developments.

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Page Count

424

Publisher

Charles Scribner's Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

0684195798

ISBN 13

9780684195797

Reaping the Whirlwind

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell

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Reaping the Whirlwind

By: Robert Jefferson Norrell

Bringing us close to the complex history of the civil rights movement in the American South—the currents that involved thousands of communities and millions of individual lives—this book looks deeply into the experiences of a single Alabama town, Tuskegee, and its surrounding Macon County. It is based on interviews with the people—white and black, liberal and traditional—whose lives were caught up in the movement and altered forever. We see Tuskegee in the early 1940s, seat of America’s most venerable institute of high education for blacks, an important symbol of black progress—yet almost entirely controlled by a white power structure—and we see the emergence of a charismatic leader, Charles G. Gomillion, who defied Tuskegee Institutes’ apolitical traditions and inspired blacks to organize for their right to vote. Thus begins decades of struggle, which Robert J. Norrell re-creates for us through the testimony of the people who lived and shaped this history: the dramatic appearance before a U.S. congressional committee of local civil rights leaders and ordinary farmers bearing witness to the seemingly endless obstructions to block voter registration; the months-long boycott of white Tuskegee merchants that was sparked by the city council’s attempt to exclude black voters by gerrymandering; the fiercely controversial move to integrate the public schools that culminated in Governor George Wallace’s order to state troopers to prevent the opening of Tuskegee High; the anguish that accompanied efforts by blacks to penetrate all-white church congregations. Norrell describes how blacks enters—and won—local elections, including those for mayor and sheriff, and how, with the onset of heightened activism in the late 1960s, Gomillion and other established leaders of the civil rights movement heard angry youthful voices raised against their cautious approach. Reaping the Whirlwind carries us through the early 1970s to a community profoundly changed, proud to have shed its false air of harmony, gradually coming to terms with the disorder and dissension of the preceding years. It is a moving and significant chronicle that documents a critical era in the nation’s history.

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Page Count

371

Publisher

Knopf

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307828514

ISBN 13

9780307828514

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

By: Robert J. Norrell

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How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

By: Robert J. Norrell

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Published Date

ISBN 10

1666941972

ISBN 13

9781666941975

The House I Live In

Race in the American Century

By: Robert J. Norrell

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The House I Live In

Race in the American Century

By: Robert J. Norrell

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Page Count

400

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198023774

ISBN 13

9780198023777

Book's by Robert J. Norrell

Up from History

Up from History

The House I Live In

The House I Live In

Up from History

Up from History

Alex Haley and the Books That Changed a Nation

Alex Haley and the Books That Changed a Nation

Like a Family

Like a Family

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

"Everybody was Black Down There"

"Everybody was Black Down There"

We Want Jobs!

We Want Jobs!

Eden Rise

Eden Rise

Dictionary of American History

Dictionary of American History

Reaping the Whirlwind

Reaping the Whirlwind

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

How History Was Used in the Wars of the Twentieth Century

The House I Live In

The House I Live In

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