The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America

by Kevern Verney

Once a neglected area, African American history is now the subject of extensive scholarly research. The Debate on Black Civil Rights in America is the first full-length study to examine the changing academic debate on developments in African American history from the 1890s to the present. It provides a critical historiographical review of the very latest thinking and explains how and why research and discourse have evolved in the ways that they have.

Individual chapters focus on particular periods in African American history from the spread of racial segregation in the 1890s through to the postwar Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement of the sixties and seventies. The concluding chapters address the modern day black experience and the images of African Americans in popular culture.

Appraising both the existing scholarship and the changing philosophy of the historical profession, this work will be invaluable to scholars, students and general readers alike.

216 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2006

Reviews

[Andrea]

I found it invaluable to just sit and read a basic account of the historiography of the Black Civil Rights Movement, allowing me to put my readings in a broader context of scholarship. At the same time, it is a very narrow reading of civil rights I thought...I know this kind of work must invariably make choices in what to included and not to include. But damn, I would have considered Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Bell Hooks, all needed mentioning. I would have noted June Jordan as well. I would have had something on the great housing struggles and the numerous brilliant studies of those. More on education and transportation struggles. Because this is not a large book by any stretch, he didn't need to work to reduce page count. This is especially true as there is so little out there really, he's bemoaning the excessive reliance on biographies and autobiographies, but if historians and social scientists were fully taking this on that would hardly be a problem. It is only that these biographies are serving as THE account of what has happened in the absence of wider institutional interest. Which is a damn shame, and I feel he could have done more to highlight what is missing, the many struggles and organizers and groups that have not been studied at all...

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant little tool for all your civil rights research needs. This book has currently been the basis of the majority of my personal study notes on peaceful protest and militancy in the search for equality.

If you need a consise book which gives a clear and no nonsense perspective and explaination of black civil rights in America, then this is the book for you!

[Julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazingly helpful with my dissertation on war and blacks in america from 1860-1980. Concisely summarises the debates on the causes/themes/outcomes of the civil rights movement and role of key players. A must-read for anyone wanting to know more about different perspectives on the movement