Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma [Hardcover]

J. Mills Thornton III (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 25, 2002

With this bold offering from two decades of research, J. Mills Thornton III presents the story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of community-municipal history at the grassroots level. Thornton demonstrates that the movement had powerful local sources in its three birth cities—Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. There, the arcane mechanisms of state and city governance and the missteps of municipal politicians and civic leaders—independent of emerging national trends in racial mores—led to the great swell of energy for change that became the civil rights movement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Thornton's opus is the most important book to be written on the civil rights movement in a decade. . . . It is impossible to truly understand the movement without reading, absorbing, and analyzing this first-rate study of three Alabama cities in turmoil."

—Douglas Brinkley, Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies and Professor of History at the University of New Orleans

"Dividing Lines will quickly come to be regarded as the most original and interpretively significant work of civil rights movement historiography to have been published within the past 15 or 20 years, or perhaps simply ever."

—David J. Garrow, author of Bearing the Cross

About the Author

J. Mills Thornton III is Professor of History at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and author of Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama 1800-1860.

 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 752 pages
• Publisher: University Alabama Press (September 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081731170X
• ISBN-13: 978-0817311704
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,289,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful and detailed history, August 21, 2003

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John Cork (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (Hardcover)

As someone who has researched and studied the civil rights movement, I was impressed and moved by J. Mills Thornton's rich examination of how a movement that changed America sprang forth in three key cities - Montgomery, Alabama (my home town), Birmingham, and Selma. The famous dictum that 'all politics is local' has never read more true. What Thornton does is take the reader inside the world of local politics, re-introducing the readers to the importance of what may seem like small, local decissions, and how even one city commission election can change the course of history for a nation. This book stands with Carry Me Home, Parting the Waters, and Pillar of Fire as essential reading for those who truely want to understand our all too recent history of race, discrimination, and civil rights. While the text of the book is 583 pages (before notes and a detailed index), it is a worthy and enlightening read. Once read, I doubt anyone will miss voting in a local election again.