The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance, Third Edition

by William T. Martin Riches

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States struggled to create a nation. The Civil War ended de jure slavery but it needed the movement to dismantle laws designed to keep African Americans subordinated to white power. In this compelling introduction, William T. Martin Riches analyses the way African Americans developed a mass movement after World War II and overthrew state-enforced racial segregation despite fierce resistance from whites. Riches emphasizes how the movement influenced others seeking justice in America, and evaluates the coalitions formed to preserve gains threatened by the rise of the New Right.

Thoroughly revised and updated in the light of the latest scholarship, the third edition of The Civil Rights Movement :

• sets the movement in its broader context
• stresses the changing role of black women, and their problems with the women's movement and black nationalism
• demonstrates the positive influence on some white southerners
• explores the key role played by the state and federal judiciaries
• assesses the administrations of George W. Bush
• examines the rise of Neo-Conservatism
• covers the presidential election campaign of 2008 and analyses Barack Obama's first months in office. The Civil Rights Movement  will be essential reading for students and scholars of American History and American Studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2010

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance by William T. Martin Riches is part of a series published by MacMillan in the UK called Studies and Contemporary History. It is an excellent, readable overview of the fight by African Americans and their allies to achieve full citizenship. It is also an instructive guide to how, in the last 40 years, the Republican Party has done whatever it can to roll back the gains blacks battled so hard for in the 60s.
Riches clearly has a point of view. He attended the University of Tennessee in the 60s and participated in demonstrations there. However, he backs up his assertions with copious footnotes and a long bibliography, so the reader can be sure that he isn't just making this stuff up.
This is a short book. It could be used by high school students, but it seems to me that Riches expects the reader to know the cast of characters and the long list of acronyms of the time. Not that he doesn't introduce people on first reference and give them a tag to help the reader if they are important for a short period of time, as he did for Eugene "Bull" Connor, "the violent, racist police chief of Birmingham, Alabama." But 70 years of history means a lot of players, from President Harry S Truman to Ralph Abernathy to Lee Atwater, and a reader less interested in history and how events play out over the decades might get bogged down.
If you want to refresh your knowledge of the period and don't have time or the intestinal fortitude to read three volume accounts Riches' book will stand you in good stead.