Gender and the Civil Rights Movement

edited by Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith

Rutgers University Press, 2004
eISBN: 978-0-8135-6853-9 | Paper: 978-0-8135-3438-1
Library of Congress Classification E185.61.G284 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 323.11960730082

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This collection of nine essays analyzes the people, the protests, and the incidents of the civil rights movement through the lens of gender. More than just a study of women, the book examines the ways in which assigned sexual roles and values shaped the strategy, tactics, and ideology of the movement. The essays deal with topics ranging from the Montgomery bus boycott and Rhythm and Blues to gangsta rap and contemporary fiction, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Referring to groups such as the National Council of African American Men and events such as the Million Man March, the authors address male gender identity as much as female, arguing that slave/master relations from before the Civil War continued to affect Black masculinity in the postwar battle for civil rights. Whereas feminism traditionally deals with issues of patriarchy and prescribed gender roles, this volume shows how race relations continue to complicate sex-based definitions within the civil rights movement.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Peter J. Ling is reader in American history at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Martin Luther King Jr. and The Democratic Party: A Photographic History.

Sharon Monteith is reader in American studies at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include South to a New Place: Region, Literature, Culture and Advancing Sisterhood?: Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction. She was awarded the Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship at the University of Memphis, 2001-2002.

REVIEWS

"The most interesting field for new research on the civil rights movement is in the area of gender. This book breaks new ground by moving beyond a discussion of the contributions of individual women and men and covers the gendered basis of internal civil rights politics."

— Steven Lawson, author of Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle

"These provocative, wide-ranging analyses offer refreshing perspectives on the persistently troubling question of the role of gender in American racial politics and bring contemporary debates on the relationship between sex and race into much-needed historical perspective."

— Allison Graham, author of Framing the South: Hollywood, Television, and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS
Introduction: Gender and the Civil Rights Movement
	Peter J. Ling and Sharon Monteith
Chapter 1	Daisy Bates, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and 1957 Little Rock School Crisis: A Gendered Perspective
	John A. Kirk
Chapter 2 	Sex Machines and Prisoners of Love: Male Rhythm and Blues, Sexual Politics, and the Black Freedom Struggle
	Brian Ward
Chapter 3	"Dress modestly, neatly . . . as if you were going to church": Respectability, Class, and Gender in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Early Civil Rights Movement
	Marisa Chappell, Jenny Hutchinson, and Brian Ward
LEADERSHIP
Chapter 4	Gender and Generation: Manhood at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
	Peter J. Ling
Chapter 5	Women in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee: Ideology, Organizational Structure, and Leadership
	Belinda Robnett
Chapter 6	The "Gun-Toting" Gloria Richardson: Black Violence in Cambridge, Maryland
	Jenny Walker
LEGACY
Chapter 7	"It's a Doggy-Dogg World": Black Cultural Politics, Gangsta Rap and the "Post-Soul Man"
	Eithne Quinn
Chapter 8	Revisiting the 1960s in Contemporary Fiction: "Where do we go from here?"
	Sharon Monteith
Chapter 9	"The Struggle Continues": Black Women in Congress in the 1990s
	Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson
Contributors
Index




Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: African Americans Civil rights History 20th century, Civil rights movements United States History 20th century, Women civil rights workers United States History 20th century, African American women civil rights workers History 20th century, Sex role United States History 20th century, Sexism United States History 20th century, United States Race relations History 20th century

See other books on: African American women civil rights workers | Civil Rights Movement | Civil rights movements | Sexism | Women civil rights workers
See other titles from Rutgers University Press

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