Sweet Land of Liberty?
STUDIES IN MODERN HISTORY
General editors: John Morrill and David Cannadine
This series, intended primarily for students, will tackle significant historical issues in concise volumes which are both stimulating and scholarly. The authors combine a broad approach, explaining the current state of our knowledge in the area, with their own research and judgements: and the topics chosen range widely in subject, period and place.
Titles already published
C HILDREN AND C HILDHOOD IN W ESTERN S OCIETY S INCE 1500 Hugh Cunningham
T HE B RITISH IN THE A MERICAS 14801815 Anthony McFarlane
T HE T UDOR P ARLIAMENTS: Crown, Lords and Commons, 14851603 Michael A.R. Graves
F RANCE IN THE A GE OF H ENRI IV: The Struggle for Stability (2nd Edn) Mark Greengrass
[L IBERTY AND O RDER IN E ARLY M ODERN E UROPE] J.H. Sherman
T HE E AST I NDIA C OMPANY: A History; 16001857 Philip Lawson
P OLITICS U NDER THE L ATER S TUARTS: Party Conflict in a Divided Society 16001715 Tim Harris
A S YSTEM OF A MBITION? British Foreign Policy 16601793 Jeremy Black
P OPULAR R ADICALISM: The Working Class Experience, 17801880 D.G. Wright
I MPERIAL M ERIDIAN: The British Empire and the World 17801830 C.A. Bayly
P AX B RITANNICA? British Foreign Policy, 17891914 Muriel E. Chamberlain
[W HITE S OCIETY IN THE A NTEBELLUM S OUTH] Bruce Collins
B RITAIN AND L ATIN A MERICA IN THE N INETEENTH AND T WENTIETH C ENTURIES Rory Miller
T HE H OUSE OF L ORDS IN B RITISH P OLITICS AND S OCIETY 18151911 E. A. Smith
[V ICTORIAN R ADICALISM] Paul Adelman
I RELAND S INCE 1880: Conflict and Conformity Theodore Hoppen
C OUNTRY B EFORE P ARTY: Coalition and the Idea of National Government in Modern Britain, 18851987 G.R. Searle
P OOR C ITIZENS: The State and the Poor in Twentieth-Century Britain David Vincent
B RITANNIA O VERRULED: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century David Reynolds
B LACK L EADERSHIP IN A MERICA: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse Jackson (2nd Edn) John White
S WEET L AND OF L IBERTY? The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century Robert Cook
[Titles not currently available, 1998]
Sweet Land of Liberty?
The African-American Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century
ROBERT COOK
First published 1998 by Pearson Education Limited
Published 2013 by Routledge
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Copyright 1998, Taylor & Francis.
The right of Robert Cook to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN 13: 978-0-58221532-0 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cook, Robert, 1958
Sweet land of liberty? : the Black struggle for civil rights in twentieth-century America / Robert Cook.
p. cm. (Studies in modern history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-21531-5. ISBN 0-582-21532-3 (pbk.)
1. Afro-AmericansCivil rightsHistory20th century. 2. Civil rights movementsUnited StatesHistory20th century. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in modern history (Longman (Firm))
E185.61.C773 1997
323.1196073dc21
978579
CIP
Set by 35 in 10/12pt Baskerville
To the memory of George Atkinson (19051988)
and
Lenore Atkinson (19041996)
My Country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died;
Land of the pilgrims pride;
From every mountain side
Let Freedom ring!
Samuel Francis Smith (18081895), America
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of Gods children will be able to sing with new meaning my country tis of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims pride; from every mountain side, let freedom ring and if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream speech, 28 August 1963
Contents
The interchangeable use of the terms black and African American in this book reflects common usage in the United States today. Readers, however, should be alerted to the fact that earlier in the century blacks and whites alike preferred the terms Negro (or negro) and coloured. When such terms appear in the text quotation marks are employed in order to reflect their current redundancy.
I have incurred numerous debts in the course of researching and writing this book. Particular thanks go to Bruce Collins for giving the project his initial support and to those historians who read and commented critically on draft chapters: David Cannadine, Peter Ling, John Morrill, John White and my colleagues at the University of Sheffield, Richard Carwardine and Patrick Renshaw. Several American and British scholars of the civil rights movement provided me with much-needed advice, information and encouragement along the way: not only Peter Ling (whose fine work on the SCLC citizenship schools did much to alter my perception of the movement) but also Tony Badger, Maureen Cressey-Hackett, Adam Fairclough, Rick Halpern, Richard King, John Kirk, Keith Miller, Bruce Nelson, Mark Newman, Jenny Walker, Brian Ward and Clive Webb. I have also benefited from several years of seminar discussions with undergraduate and postgraduate students who participated in my civil rights special subject class at Sheffield. Financial aid, gratefully acknowledged, from my own institution and the British Academy enabled me to deliver conference papers in Newcastle, Chicago and Rome and to make essential research visits to the United States where Joe Glazer enlightened me with his first-hand accounts of labour organising in the 1940s and where I was heavily dependent on the generosity of my long-suffering friends Mary Beveridge, Julianne Borton, Barbara Holmlund, Mary Wright and John Zeller. I should also like to thank my editors at Addison Wesley Longman, Andrew MacLennan and Terka Bagley, as well as Word-wise Edit for assistance with the index and the helpful staff of the King Center in Atlanta, the Library of Congresss Manuscript Division, the MoorlandSpingarn Research Center at Howard University, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. My greatest debt, however, is to my mother, Margaret, and my father, John, and to Andrea, Martha, and Daniel for their unwavering love and support. This book could not have been written without them.
