United States History - African American History, United States History - 20th Century - General & Miscellaneous, African American History, United States History - Northeastern & Middle Atlantic Region, Ethnic & Race Relations, Civil & Human Rights, Unite
This book convincingly demonstrates that the national struggle for black civil rights raged not only on the campuses, courtrooms, voting booths, and establishments of the South, but also as far north as Vermont. With 519 black residents in 1960, barely .1% of the state's population, Vermont was considered to be the "whitest state in the Union." As the first state to prohibit slavery and grant universal male suffrage, many of Vermont's citizens fancied themselves enlightened advocates of racial and political egalitarianism. Most considered the national movement for black equality to be primarily an effort to desegregate the South in the North's image. In Civil Rights in the Whitest State, Stephen M. Wrinn explains why residents' reactions to the movement did not conform to their self-perceptions of racial enlightenment. Using a wealth of primary evidence, the author shows how the movement's shifting focus from voting rights to public accommodations and fair housing raised Vermonters' apprehensions that compulsory integration threatened their rights of associations, privacy, and private property. Many Vermonters who supported a civil rights movement confined to the South resisted modifying their own practices and denied that racial discrimination existed in the state. Wrinn demonstrates how Vermont Senator George D. Aiken reflected the sentiments of many Vermonters at the national level by providing a crucial compromise that secured passage of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the nation's history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
About the Author, Stephen M. Wrinn
Stephen M. Wrinn is the history and political theory editor at Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Wrinn does an excellent job of of revisiting this difficult time in Vermont history...the author thoughtfully shows the deliberative actions of Vermont public servants and courageously acknowledges Vermont's critical leadership in developing and passing the civil rights protections we now enjoy.
Booknews
Explores the actions, perceptions, and responses of Vermont's citizens and politicians to the national struggle for civil rights. The author argues that at the beginning of the movement there was broad support for the goals and tactics of the movement in the South. However, with the enactment of national civil rights laws in 1957 and 1960 leading to a changed national focus towards issues such as equal access to public accommodations, the consensus splintered, due to fears that integration threatened the rights of association, privacy, and private property. Sections of the book analyze the problem of racists who opposed legislation using nonracial language and Vermont Senator George D. Aiken's small business compromise stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
