FREEDOM BOUND: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement

by Robert Weisbrot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 27, 1989

From Colby College history professor Weisbrot, a flowing and well-documented history of the US civil-rights movement from the 1960 sit-in at the Greensboro, S.C., five-and-ten to the 1980's Reagan Administration attack on civil-rights legislation and enforcement. Weisbrot's familiar thesis is that civil-rights leaders had initial success in overturning the southern system of segregation but, later, were thwarted by the much greater challenges of trying to reverse the entire nation's decades-long history of racism and economic exploitation of blacks. Eventual black demands for equality of condition (not just protection against individual discrimination) based on busing and affirmative action would fail to gain support from many white liberals who had earlier supported desegregation and voting rights: ""The liberal coalition of the 1960s thus wrought, in effect, a self-limiting revolution."" Those who led the civil-rights movement, black and white, overwhelmingly professed the liberalism of mainstream American reform and thus were bound by set limits of that creed. Yet, the author feels, the movement proved itself strong enough to withstand the attacks of Black Power advocates and law-and-order Republicans. The lasting achievements of the movement include overturning a biracial legal system, instituting real black voting power, and changing southern attitudes to a consensus favoring progressive racial policies. It is unlikely these modern black gains will ever be rolled back, Weisbrot argues, because blacks have more real power today than ever before. A history distinguished by vivid mini-biographies of everyone in the movement from Martin Luther King to lesser knowns like the fiery Fannie Lou Hamer, and also by dramatic renderings of all the key events from the Brown decision to Watts to the Bakke ruling. An excellent account of the civil-rights era, then, thoughtful, fair, and thorough--although offering no new interpretations of the material.

Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1989

ISBN: 0393332438

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION