Long before the Montgomery bus boycott ushered in the modern civil rights movement; black and white southerners struggled to forge interracial democracy in America. This innovative book examines the most successful interracial coalition in the nineteenth-century South; Virginia's Readjuster Party; and uncovers a surprising degree of fluidity in postemancipation southern politics. Melding social; cultural; and political history; Jane Dailey chronicles the Readjusters' efforts to foster political cooperation across the color line. She demonstrates that the power of racial rhetoric; and the divisiveness of racial politics; derived from the everyday experiences of individual Virginians--from their local encounters on the sidewalk; before the magistrate's bench; in the schoolroom. In the process; she reveals the power of black and white southerners to both create and resist new systems of racial discrimination. The story of the Readjusters shows how hard white southerners had to work to establish racial domination after emancipation; and how passionately black southerners fought each and every infringement of their rights as Americans.
#612779 in Books The University of North Carolina Press 1996-11-25Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .67 x 6.00l; .82 #File Name: 0807846031266 pages
Review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Outstanding!By Michael SivapragasamBenjamin Quarles' in-depth study of the black soldiers who fought in the American War of Independence is still the best in-depth study of this period. He dealt with soldiers on both sides; but pointed out that Britain's curious decision to grant freedom to slaves who fought for the British ensured that more black soldiers fought on the side of the Loyalists; which is a little-known fact in the teaching of history today. Crispus Attuck was an exception rather than the norm.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Very informative materialBy Robert I. WilliamsThis book really gave me some great perspective. This was information here that I had not found here that I had not found in the other books I read on this subject.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Complete;but dry.By Cheryl Ann WillenThis was incredibly well researched and it shows. It seems to be as comets an overview of blacks that could be possible. Certainly a must for anyone interested in the revolution. It is at times a very dry regurgitation of facts. Too often those facts do not really take the reader anywhere.
