OUP explains:
Here are two blurbs:Much of the struggle for racial justice in the United States has taken place in the courts, from the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 to Brown v. Board of Education to recent cases on affirmative action and voter suppression. But the legal aspects of this struggle involve far more than Supreme Court precedents. Defining the Struggle is a ground-breaking and important exploration of how late nineteenth and early twentieth century national organizations-including the National Afro American League, the National Afro American Council, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement-developed myriad strategies for law-related racial justice organizing. It tells the story of these organizations and their leaders and motivations, the initiatives they undertook, and the ideas about law and racial justice activism they developed and passed on to future generations. While it is well known that the racial justice struggle was arduous in the mid-twentieth century, this struggle was dramatically more difficult in the period before that, making the story of these individuals and the organizations they led all the more remarkable.
Law professor Susan D. Carle traces the fascinating, sometimes fractious campaigns for voting rights, anti-lynching laws, civil rights equality, social welfare policy, and economic advancement. She shows how these early national organizations transmitted their ideas and experiences to two flagship national racial justice organizations of the early twentieth century, the NAACP and National Urban League. In so doing Carle sheds new light on how these early origins helped set the path for twentieth century legal civil rights activism in the United States. With unparalleled scholarly depth and a vivid, compelling narrative, Defining the Struggle explores the forerunner organizations and individuals whose contributions have largely been forgotten today.
"Susan Carle writes a clear and convincing history of the first generation of civil rights organizers and advocates-the movement that started the Movement. We all stand on their shoulders. Let us remember their names and know their stories."-Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO, NAACP
"Susan Carle's study of nineteenth-century social and legal activism is ground breaking. By shedding new light on the historical roots of the Second Reconstruction and mapping the intellectual links between modern civil rights groups and long-forgotten visionaries, Carle has made a remarkable contribution."-Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of the Bancroft-Prize winning Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement
TOC after the jump.
Introduction
Chapter 1. A New Generation of Post-Reconstruction Leaders
Chapter 2. The Legal and Political Vision of T. Thomas Fortune, Founder of the National Afro American League, 1880-1890
Chapter 3. The National Afro American League's Founding and Law-Related Work, 1887-1895
Chapter 4: The Dispute between the "Radicals" and the "Accommodationists" within the Afro American Council: Reverdy Ransom and Booker T. Washington's Contrasting Visions of Racial Justice, 1895-1902
Chapter 5: The Afro American Council's Internal History, 1898-1908
Chapter 6: "Should Not a Nation Be Just to All of Her Citizens?": The Afro American Council's Legal Work, 1898-1908
Chapter 7: "Unity in Diversity": The National Association of Colored Women's Dual Social Welfare and Civil Rights Agenda, 1895-1910
Chapter 8: Asserting "Manhood" Rights: The Niagara Movement's First Year, 1905
Chapter 9: The Beginnings of Twentieth Century Protest in the Niagara Movement's Experience, 1906-1909
Chapter 10: Atlanta and New York City; Founding the National Urban League
Chapter 11: Founding the NAACP: Building the Organization, 1908-1915
Chapter 12: Building the NAACP's Legal Agenda, 1910-1915
Conclusion
