Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Blacks in the New World) [Paperback]

John Dittmer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0252065077 | ISBN-13: 978-0252065071 | Publication Date: May 1, 1995 | Edition: First Edition

Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Mississippi Historical Society McLemore Prize, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize. For decades the most racially repressive state in the nation fought bitterly and violently to maintain white supremacy. John Dittmer traces the monumental battle waged by civil rights organizations and by local people, particularly courageous members of the black communities who were willing to put their lives on the line to establish basic human rights for all citizens of the state. Local People tells the whole grim story in depth for the first time, from the unsuccessful attempts of black World War II veterans to register to vote to the seating of a civil rights-oriented Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Particularly dramatic - and heartrending - is Dittmer's account of the tumultuous decade of the sixties: the freedom rides of 1961, which resulted in the imprisonment at Parchman of dozens of participants; the violent reactions to protests in McComb and Jackson and to vote registration drives in Greenwood and other cities; the riot in Oxford when James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss; the cowardly murder of longtime leader Medger Evers; and the brutal Klan lynchings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Dittmer looks closely at the policies and actions of the Kennedy administration, which, bowing to Mississippi's powerful senators John Stennis and James Eastland, refused to intervene even in the face of obvious collusion among local officials and vigilantes. Through oral history accounts readers will come to know many of the local people and grass-roots organizers who worked, and in some cases gave their lives, for the cause of civil rights. Among those whose stories are told are Fannie Lou Hamer, the Sunflower County sharecropper who helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party; Victoria Gray and Annie Devine, who with Mrs. Hamer challenged the seating of Mississippi's congressional delegation in 1965; Bob Moses of SNCC, the most significant "outsider" in the movement; Hollis Watkins, a SNCC field secretary from southwest Mississippi; and Dave Dennis, a freedom rider from New Orleans who became CORE's Mississippi field secretary in 1962. In the final chapter, Dittmer charts the transformative strength of the Mississippi movement while pointing out the limitations of its hard-earned reforms. If black Mississippians did not achieve all their goals, he reminds us, they nonetheless managed to bring about extraordinary changes in a state that had been locked in the caste system for nearly a century. John Dittmer, a professor of history at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, is the author of Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920. From 1967 to 1979 he taught history at Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dittmer's stirring history of the struggle for racial justice in Mississippi tells the story in all its grim, often shocking detail. He delivers a damning indictment of the Kennedy administration for its half-hearted policies and failure to enforce the Supreme Court's ban on segregation. White churches, the author shows, consistently opposed black demands for equality and offered no leadership during the crucial 1960s. After 1966, he contends, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had little impact on the Mississippi movement, whereas the grass-roots Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party made strides in black empowerment. Along with key figures, such as Medgar Evers and James Meredith, Dittmer, a DePauw history professor, profiles dozens of unsung heroes. He also demonstrates that women played a dominant role in the black freedom campaigns of the '60s. His assessment of gains and setbacks to date ("More than half the state's black children . . . were living below the poverty line in 1990") will jolt readers. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Superbly realized history of the civil rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1960s. Dittmer lays in the background by giving an account of postwar voting registration efforts and then the rising tide of hope and violence that followed Brown v. Board of Education. Dittmer knows a number of the principals and has lived for many years in Mississippi; he is also a sure stylist. So his accounts of events such as the lynchings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman move one to outrage all over again. He is not quite up-to-date on Byron De La Beckworth, convicted murderer of Medgar Evers, but perhaps that detail will be taken care of by press time. John Mort --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; First Edition edition (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252065077
• ISBN-13: 978-0252065071
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An essential book on civil rights movement history, December 14, 2000

By 

Peter Kasin (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Blacks in the New World) (Paperback)

Much of our common knowledge of U.S. civil rights movement's history comes from books and films portraying the nationally known struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. This book tells a different story - the struggles of the largely African American activists who, working without the benefit of the national spotlight, sought to open up the closed society of Mississippi to equal treatment for its African American citizens. It was a tremendous and extremely dangerous task. Mississippi was the toughest nut to crack among the Southern states. It was the most impoverished state in the union, where subjugation of African Americans was strictly enforced through intimidation, violence, disenfranchisement, job firings and economic ruin. Any sympathetic whites who dared to even question Mississippi justice were financially ruined and all but run out of the state. In this seemingly impossible to change social, political, and economic climate, a movement of local Mississippi African Americans emerged, with the help of activists from other states, who challenged the situation head-on by attempting to empower African Americans through voter registration drives, by attempting to set up cooperatives in order to gain economic power, and through education. The emphasis was not so much on organizing for desegregation of public facilities as it was on changing the power structure of Mississippi, to enfranchise its African American citizens and gain for them political and economic justice. Working from the bottom up, these activists had few allies, were largely ignored by the national media, and faced life threatening dangers on a daily and nightly basis. Many were savagely beaten, shot at, and repeatedly jailed. Several were murdered. They persisted, working diligently and out of the spotlight. Local People details the successes and failures of these every day struggles, and by doing so, lifts this aspect of the movement from obscurity to its rightful place in history. Prof. Dittmer is a first-rate writer - this book is very hard to put down once you start reading it. What emerges is a portrait of some of the most courageous people in our nation's history, such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Amzie Moore, and Bob Moses, and the local people who responded to the activists efforts. Local People is essential reading for any true understanding of the civil rights movement.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a first-rate history and a good read., September 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Blacks in the New World) (Paperback)

Local People is a well-written, deeply-researched, and brilliantly conceived book. It takes the reader far beyond the civil rights celebrities and the TV history that is all too familiar, and roots the movement among the local folk of the black South. It also sees deeply into the politics of black liberation in those decisive years, giving us rich insights and telling anecdotes. Still more impressive, Local People manages to be a first-rate work of scholarship and a great read. If you have a history buff in the family or someone who likes American politics, this makes a great gift. My father couldn't put it down.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book is the way History should be Written, April 23, 2000

By 

n/a - See all my reviews

This review is from: Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Blacks in the New World) (Paperback)

In my opinion this work looks at the civil rights movement in a way that all historians shoud take note of. Dittmer's in-depth bottom up look at the way movements happen allows a deeper understanding of the incredible struggles that local Mississippians went through for a few small steps toward racial equality. It also knocks the national leaders (JFK, LBJ, MLK) off the pedestals that mainstream history has placed under them and shows the truly peripheral role that they played in the struggle.