Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s

by Robert Cohen (Editor), David J. Snyder (Editor), Dan T. Carter (Foreword by)

Overview

In the 1960s, southern college campuses—both historically black and predominantly white—became powerful centers of student dissent, activism, and protest.

Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL

Rebellion in Black and White offers a panoramic view of southern student activism in the 1960s. Original scholarly essays demonstrate how southern students promoted desegregation, racial equality, free speech, academic freedom, world peace, gender equity, sexual liberation, Black Power, and the personal freedoms associated with the counterculture of the decade.

Most accounts of the 1960s student movement and the New Left have been northern-centered, focusing on rebellions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, and others. And yet, students at southern colleges and universities also organized and acted to change race and gender relations and to end the Vietnam War. Southern students took longer to rebel due to the south’s legacy of segregation, its military tradition, and its Bible Belt convictions, but their efforts were just as effective as those in the north. Rebellion in Black and White sheds light on higher education, students, culture, and politics of the American south. Edited by Robert Cohen and David J. Snyder, the book features the work of both seasoned historians and a new generation of scholars offering fresh perspectives on the civil rights movement and many others.

Contributors:

Dan T. Carter
David T. Farber
Jelani Favors
Wesley Hogan
Christopher A. Huff
Nicholas G. Meriwether
Gregg L. Michel
Kelly Morrow
Doug Rossinow
Cleveland L. Sellers Jr.
Gary S. Sprayberry
Marcia G. Synnott
Jeffrey A. Turner
Erica Whittington
Joy Ann Williamson-Lott

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421408507
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Cohen is a professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University.

Table of Contents

Foreword. Deep South Campus Memories and the World the Sixties Made
Origins and Acknowledgments
Introduction. Prophetic Minority versus Recalcitrant Majority: Southern Student Dissent and the Struggle for Progressive Change in the 1960s
Part I: Early Days: From Talk to Action
Chapter 1. Freedom Now! SNCC Galvanizes the New Left
Chapter 2. Student Free Speech on Both Sides of the Color Line in Mississippi and the Carolinas
Chapter 3. Interracial Dialogue and the Southern Student Human Relations Project
Chapter 4. Moderate White Activists and the Struggle for Racial Equality on South Carolina Campuses
Part II: Campus Activism Takes Shape
Chapter 5. The Rise of Black and White Student Protest in Nashville
Chapter 6. Student Radicalism and the Antiwar Movement at the University of Alabama
Chapter 7. Conservative Student Activism at the University of Georgia
Part III: A Cultural Revolution and Its Discontents
Chapter 8. Sexual Liberation at the University of North Carolina
Chapter 9. The Counterculture as Local Culture in Columbia, South Carolina
Chapter 10. Government Repression of the Southern New Left
Part IV: Black Power and the Legacy of the Freedom Movement
Chapter 11. North Carolina A&T Black Power Activists and the Student Organization for Black Unity
Chapter 12. Black Power and the Freedom Movement in Retrospect
Historiographical Reflections
Afterword
List of Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

"These essays hold the key to understanding the revolution that challenged American inequality, injustice, and values during the 1960s. These fresh, powerful histories of southern student protest should put to rest the tendency to treat southern civil rights as merely the precursor to the northern new left."

Leon Litwack

"Based on the experiences of students in the civil rights movement and a new generation of scholarship and research, Rebellion in Black and White makes for compelling reading as it chronicles those who risked their lives and livelihood to bring down nearly 400 years of enforced repression, who fought the power, challenged the hype, and expanded the meaning and scope of freedom."

From the Publisher

Based on the experiences of students in the civil rights movement and a new generation of scholarship and research, Rebellion in Black and White makes for compelling reading as it chronicles those who risked their lives and livelihood to bring down nearly 400 years of enforced repression, who fought the power, challenged the hype, and expanded the meaning and scope of freedom.
—Leon Litwack, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, author of How Free Is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow

Rebellion in Black and White recovers a rich history of protest and activism on southern college campuses in the 1960s and early 1970s and disrupts the framework that has long shaped popular understandings of that era. With essays focusing on various places at particular times during a tumultuous decade, this superbly organized collection captures the diverse and shifting nature of southern student activism—along and across the color line—instantly revising the national contours of the 'rights revolution' of the sixties and inviting fresh questions about the history and its long-term legacies.
—Patricia Sullivan, author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement

Since living in Atlanta from 1960–62 as a student civil rights activist, I've long retained a haunted feeling about the South . . . its terrorist and racist history. But there’s something noble about those southerners, mostly black but sometimes white, who stood up so bravely from the Carolinas to the Black Belt. Memory really matters, and our memories of that time forget the regional nature of the insurgency against Jim Crow. This loving history begins to restore the balance, by remembering the role of southern student organizers black and white, whose contribution cannot be measured but whose courage must not be forgotten.
—Tom Hayden, author of The Long Sixties

This brilliant, comprehensive collection on southern student activism will require every historian of the ‘long sixties’ finally to take into account the biracial New Left in Dixie, where some of the hardest-fought campus struggles took place. It’s a game-changer not just for historians, but for anyone interested in southern history and the long civil rights movement.
—Van Gosse, author of Rethinking the New Left

These essays hold the key to understanding the revolution that challenged American inequality, injustice, and values during the 1960s. These fresh, powerful histories of southern student protest should put to rest the tendency to treat southern civil rights as merely the precursor to the northern new left.
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times

Van Gosse

This brilliant, comprehensive collection on southern student activism will require every historian of the ‘long sixties’ finally to take into account the biracial New Left in Dixie, where some of the hardest-fought campus struggles took place. It’s a game-changer not just for historians, but for anyone interested in southern history and the long civil rights movement.

Patricia Sullivan

Rebellion in Black and White recovers a rich history of protest and activism on southern college campuses in the 1960s and early 1970s and disrupts the framework that has long shaped popular understandings of that era. With essays focusing on various places at particular times during a tumultuous decade, this superbly organized collection captures the diverse and shifting nature of southern student activism—along and across the color line—instantly revising the national contours of the 'rights revolution' of the sixties and inviting fresh questions about the history and its long-term legacies.

Robin D. G. Kelley

These essays hold the key to understanding the revolution that challenged American inequality, injustice, and values during the 1960s. These fresh, powerful histories of southern student protest should put to rest the tendency to treat southern civil rights as merely the precursor to the northern new left.

Tom Hayden

Since living in Atlanta from 1960–62 as a student civil rights activist, I've long retained a haunted feeling about the South . . . its terrorist and racist history. But there’s something noble about those southerners, mostly black but sometimes white, who stood up so bravely from the Carolinas to the Black Belt. Memory really matters, and our memories of that time forget the regional nature of the insurgency against Jim Crow. This loving history begins to restore the balance, by remembering the role of southern student organizers black and white, whose contribution cannot be measured but whose courage must not be forgotten.

Editorial Reviews

This collection makes a strong contribution to the prevailing conversation about student activism with its less-told, and often surprising, narratives from the South.

North Carolina Historical Review - John Blythe

An excellent starting point for anyone wanting to understand the protests of the 1960s . . . Essential.

Choice

This quality volume is an excellent foundation for scholars eager to further complicate our understanding of 1960s activism nationally.

Journal of American History - Benjamin Houston

Taken together, this collection of taut, well-organized essays reveals the contest that the decade of the 1960s was, and its memory remains. . . This well-balanced collection should contribute in important ways to ongoing efforts to bring greater nuance to narratives of the 1960s, the South, and the nation as a whole.

History - David Taft Terry

This collection makes a strong contribution to the prevailing conversation about student activism with its less-told, and often surprising, narratives from the South.

Johns Hopkins University Press

From the Publisher

This fine volume on southern student activism in the 1960s offers a timely reminder — several actually — of a troubled and not so distant past. . . An impressive range of well-argued, fresh contributions.

Journal of Southern History - Charles J. Holden