Defying Jim Crow: African American Community Development and the Struggle for Racial Equality in New Orleans, 1900-1960

From the earliest days of Jim Crow, African Americans in New Orleans rallied around the belief that the new system of racially biased laws, designed to relegate them to second-class citizenship, was neither legitimate nor permanent. Drawing on shared memories of fluid race relations and post–Civil War political participation, they remained committed to a disciplined and sustained pursuit of equality. Defying Jim Crow tells the story of this community’s decades-long struggle against segregat...