Gender and the Civil Rights Movement

"These provocative, wide-ranging analyses offer refreshing perspectives on the persistently troubling question of the role of gender in American racial politics and bring contemporary debates on the relationship between sex and race into much-needed historical perspective."-Allison Graham, author of Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle and co-producer of the documentary film At the River I Stand

This collection of nine essays analyzes the people, the protests, and the incidents of the civil rights movement through the lens of gender. More than just a study of women, the book examines the ways in which assigned sexual roles and values shaped the strategy, tactics, and ideology of the movement. The essays deal with topics ranging from the Montgomery bus boycott and Rhythm and Blues to gangsta rap and contemporary fiction, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Referring to groups such as the National Council of African American Men and events such as the Million Man March, the authors address male gender identity as much as female, arguing that slave/master relations from before the Civil War continued to affect Black masculinity in the postwar battle for civil rights. Whereas feminism traditionally deals with issues of patriarchyand prescribed gender roles, this volume shows how race relations continue to complicate sex-based definitions within the civil rights movement.

Peter J. Ling is reader in American history at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Martin Luther King Jr. and The Democratic Party: A Photographic History. Sharon Monteith is reader in American studies at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture and Advancing Sisterhood?: Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction. She was awarded the Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship at the University of Memphis, 2001-2002.

American racism is fundamentally wrapped up with questions of personal identity, not least of which are the cultural categories of manhood and womanhood. Presented by Ling and Monteith (both of the U. of Nottingham, UK), nine papers explore the role of gender in the historic efforts to overcome racism. Among the topics are the sexual politics of rhythm and blues and the black freedom struggle, class and gender in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, conceptions of manhood at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the role of women in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, gender in contemporary fictional portrayals of the 1960s, and black women in Congress in the 1990s. This is a paperbound edition of a work first published in 1999. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR