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The South in the 1950’s Pete Daniel’s book Lost Revolutions, tells readers the story of the South in the 1950’s. In the awaken of World War II, Southerners anticipated a peaceful and prosperous future, but as Pete Daniel reveals, the road into the 1950s took some unexpected turns American History has developed, over time, into a mass of events inspired by direct and indirect causes/ revolutions as a result of an altogether different conflict. The 1950's in the South was both a time and a place of contradictions. On one hand, there was a cultural revolution going on that joined both white and black musical tastes into one revolutionary music genre such as rock 'n' roll and a governmental revolution that went on like integration which made the cultural achievements seem to light in judgment. Daniel opens his story in 1945, in the promise of postwar peace and prosperity, the core of the book is the period between, the story of how it mostly went wrong and closes it with the brutal violence released on black and white civil rights workers during 1964’s Freedom Summer. “The years between World War II and Freedom Summer were ripe with possibilities, but the postwar …show more content…
climate failed to produce political visionaries” (p.2). According to Pete Daniel, the U.S. government and local elites conspired to advance the interests of agribusiness, thus driving, agricultural workers, tenants, and marginal farmers out of the Southern landscape. Also, those migrants who moved to the urban South soon found themselves locked into confining hourly jobs and into agreement with more complicated segregation codes than had been common in farming areas. In the face of such restrictions, rural migrants created new outlets for rebellion, including rock-n-roll and stock car racing, which allowed them to challenge middle-class customs and to celebrate in their own low down culture. Daniel’s title and his introduction make his main thesis very clear “lost opportunities littered the southern landscape” (p.3) in the two decades after World War Two. He lets readers in on the best impacts on the South. Also, Daniel's thesis lets readers in on how the South offered able opportunities for change during the abrupt post-World War II era but these opportunities were unnoticed by the fact that warring groups between African-Americans and whites avoided to make important cultural revolutions make a difference in the political range. These important cultural revolutions consisted of the importance of rhythm and blues in feelings of appreciation between blacks and white country and western singers, the rise of NASCAR as a merging factor among lower-class whites to stimulating the domination of the white middle and upper-classes, and, finally, the rebelliousness displayed by both white and black youth to fake a new agreement for civil change. Pete Daniel provides two main themes the success of working-class culture and middle class stubbornness with regard to desegregation.
Southern Black soldiers came back from war with experience of a larger, freer world than they had previously known. Southern Women had wartime work experience in jobs previously limited to men. Gay and Lesbian soldiers and workers “who had never been aware of the existence of a national gay and lesbian cohort discovered friendly bars and made fast friends” (p.19). Little were prepared for a return to the region’s status quo. Pete Daniel’s book is really more than just a book about the development of the Southern society and black American public in the 1950’s, he puts into face the other “lost revolutions” that came about as a outcome of the civil rights
movement. Daniel is most authoritative discussing agricultural history, and the story he tells is a dreadful one. A “corpulent and obfuscating” government imposed and “agribusiness” approach upon a traditional “labor-intensive rural order” by means of “government subsidies administrated by local elites, land-grant university research and corporate drumming” (p.41). His accusation of administrative promotion of chemical herbicides and pesticides is extremely intense and persuasive. In this narrative the bad guys greatly outnumber the good guys and Daniel definitely doesn’t pull any punches. In his interpretation, the working-class rebelliousness in the cultural state failed to solidify into a full-scale attack on the white power organization because middle class whites continued to boost segregation as a symbol of their morality. In other words, while middle class whites were unable to tame the crazier aspects of NASCAR or to comprise the popularity of rock and roll’s union of black and white music during the 1950’s, they could still defend their status, which as derived from their privileged political, economic, and social positions. Daniel shows readers just that in Lost Revolutions. In conclusion, Lost Revolutions is first of all a story of possibilities betrayed. Daniel's book does an excellent job of explaining why there were both contradictions in Southern society and how these contradictions contributed to a painfully fought battle for integration and equal rights. Daniel's book is a true lesson in primary source research and his endnotes clearly demonstrate this. Interviews, 4 pages of manuscript collection sources, and numerous prominent secondary sources fully back up a thought-provoking thesis. It will be interesting to see who would be on the cover of historical book like this 50 year’s from now. Luke Bryan, Michael Jackson, George Strait, Adele who knows.
The book, “My Soul Is Rested” by Howell Raines is a remarkable history of the civil rights movement. It details the story of sacrifice and audacity that led to the changes needed. The book described many immeasurable moments of the leaders that drove the civil rights movement. This book is a wonderful compilation of first-hand accounts of the struggles to desegregate the American South from 1955 through 1968. In the civil rights movement, there are the leaders and followers who became astonishing in the face of chaos and violence. The people who struggled for the movement are as follows: Hosea Williams, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and others; both black and white people, who contributed in demonstrations for freedom rides, voter drives, and
Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Print.
“A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem” by Eric Garber discusses how the Great Migration to Harlem was not only significant for blacks but for gays and lesbians as well. Garber argues that Harlem’s gay subculture was at its peak in the 1920’s and declined to shell of its previous self after the Stock Market crash in 1929. He goes on to discuss how in black communities, specifically Harlem, there were troubles of segregation, racism, and economic despair, but that being gay in Harlem added new troubles.
As an unabridged version of his other book, Eric Foner sets out to accomplish four main goals in A Short History of Reconstruction. These points enable the author to provide a smaller, but not neglectful, account of the United States during Reconstruction. By exploring the essence of the black experience, examining the ways in which Southern society evolved, the development of racial attitudes and race relations, and the complexities of race and class in the postwar South, as well as the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and a new set of purposes, Foner creates a narrative that encompasses some of the major issues during Reconstruction. Additionally, the author provides
Hard Times: 1920 - 1940. (2008, November 20). In Land of Contrast: A History of Southeast
As Floyd is falling down on the stage, my heart is teared apart resonating with miserable life of African-American people in 1940s Pittsburgh. I have seen how people struggle with their assigned and unfair destiny and how the brutal reality smashes their dreams and humanity; I have seen that there were a group of people singing, dreaming, fighting, loving and dying in the red-brick house, which I might pass by everyday, all in this masterpiece of August Wilson. It is always difficult to reopen the grievous wound of the dark period during America history; however, the hurtfulness would be the most effective way forcing people to reflect the consequence of history.
The Sixties, by Terry H. Anderson, takes the reader on a journey through one of the most turbulent decades in American life. Beginning with the crew-cut conformity of 1950s Cold War culture and ending with the transition into the uneasy '70s, Anderson notes the rise of an idealistic generation of baby boomers, widespread social activism, and revolutionary counterculture. Anderson explores the rapidly shifting mood of the country with the optimism during the Kennedy years, the liberal advances of Johnson's "Great Society," and the growing conflict over Vietnam that nearly tore America apart. The book also navigates through different themes regarding the decade's different currents of social change; including the anti-war movement, the civil rights struggle, and the liberation movements. From the lunch counter sit-in of Greensboro, N.C. in 1960 and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Power movement at the decade's end, Anderson illustrates the brutality involved in the reaction against civil rights, the radicalization of some of the movement's youth, and the eventual triumphs that would change America forever. He also discusses women's liberation and the feminist movement, as well as the students' rights, gay rights, and environmental movements.
C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, has been hailed as a book which shaped our views of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and of the American South. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the book as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The argument presented in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is that the Jim Crow laws were relatively new introductions to the South that occurred towards the turn of the century rather than immediately after the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Woodward examines personal accounts, opinions, and editorials from the eras as well as the laws in place at the times. He examines the political history behind the emergence of the Jim Crow laws. The Strange Career of Jim Crow gives a new insight into the history of the American South and the Civil Rights Movement.
Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Washington, Mary Helen. Introduction. A Voice From the South. By Anna Julia Cooper. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. xxvii-liv.
Those studying the experience of African Americans in World War II consistently ask one central question: “Was World War II a turning point for African Americans?” In elaboration, does World War II symbolize a prolongation of policies of segregation and discrimination both on the home front and the war front, or does it represent the start of the Civil Rights Movement that brought racial equality? The data points to the war experience being a transition leading to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s.
In the duration of one year, 1968, the American national mood shifted from general confidence and optimism to chaotic confusion. Certainly the most turbulent twelve months of the post-WWII period and arguably one of the most disturbing episodes the country has endured since the Civil War, 1968 offers the world a glimpse into the tumultuous workings of a revolution. Although the entire epoch of the 1960's remains significant in US history, 1968 stands alone as the pivotal year of the decade; it was the moment when all of the nation's urges toward violence, sublimity, diversity, and disorder peaked to produce a transformation great enough to blanket an entire society. While some may superficially disagree, the evidence found in the Tet Offensive, race relations, and the counterculture's music of the period undeniably affirm 1968 as a turning point in American history.
The 1950s is an era remembered for the Cold War, communism, and June Cleaver. Most historians, if asked about this period, will mention the ‘Red Scare’ and the fight to stop the pervasive reach of communism in post-war America. Feminists will immediately talk about the idea of June Cleaver and the detrimental effect this perfect housewife had on the women’s movement after the massive employment of women during the Second World War. Often forgotten and missing from the pages of history are the millions of women who were ostracized and discriminated against based upon their sexuality. These women lost federal jobs, their military careers came to a halt, and, in some cases, blacklisted from applying for civilian jobs. Lesbians in this era were ostracized by society and endured unending discrimination from the government and police. In the face of this tremendous cultural pressure these women carved their own communities and lives out on the edges of the social order. The ‘Lavender Scare’ of the 1950s bred anti-gay legislation that led to horrific discrimination against lesbians and the development of a lesbian subculture. This period is currently referred to as the ‘Red Scare’ and known for the discrimination and harsh treatment of communists; It should be known as the ‘Lavender Scare’ and known for the immense persecution faced by female homosexuals in this period of history.
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...
The four-year war between the states not only left the southern cities destroyed, economy in shambles and its people destitute, but it also introduced an overwhelming population of former slaves to be integrated into the folds of the victorious Union. Freedom for the blacks came slow and progress on their behalf was contaminated, inconsistent and feeble. Freedmen and women, accustomed to strife and adversity, desired only equality as citizens of the United States, however that status was going to come at a hefty price. Lincoln proclaimed the slaves freedom in the midst of the Civil War, but that freedom was neither instant nor accepted at war’s end. With great uncertainty and only the title of freedmen the black community immediately sought out their greatest needs no matter what brutality they faced from those that refused to accept their freedom.