Scholars continue to differ over when African Americans’ struggle for civil rights began—as well as whether it has actually ended. In the long-awaited volume in our illustrious American History Series, Daniel Aldridge presents a critical and analytical study of the many different leaders and organizations, with special attention to the largely unsung ones whom most student readers never hear about, whose efforts eventually overturned the South’s legal and extralegal system of racial discrimination known as Jim Crow, radically transforming society in that blacks fully became part of the American nation. Regardless of one’s point of view, no one can dispute that African Americans’ long but successful quest for civil rights stands as one of the defining elements in United States history. Becoming American makes ideal reading for courses on the history of the Civil Rights movement as well as a superb supplement to survey courses in African American and United States history.

Table of Contents:
Preface and Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE: Emancipation, Reconstruction, and the Origins of the African American Quest for Civil Rights 1 The Civil War and Emancipation 1 The Origins of Reconstruction 7 Radical Reconstruction 17 The End of Reconstruction 28 African American Responses to the End of Reconstruction 35 CHAPTER TWO: The New Black Leadership of the Post-Reconstruction Era, 1890—1910 41 Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching 41 Disfranchisement and the Rise of Jim Crow 46 The Age of Booker T. Washington 50 W.E.B. Du Bois and the Rise of the Radicals 65 CHAPTER THREE: From the Margins to the Mainstream, 1910—1930 74 The Great Migration 74 The Origins of the NAACP 78 African Americans and World War I 86 A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, and the New Black Politics of the 1920s 96 CHAPTER FOUR: Civil Rights in the New Deal Era, 1930—1945 114 The Scottsboro Case, African Americans, and the Communist Party 114 The New Generation of the NAACP 124 African Americans, the New Deal, and the Democratic Party 131 The National Negro Congress and the March on Washington Movement 147 Civil Rights during World War II 159 CHAPTER FIVE: A Shifting of the Tide: Civil Rights in Postwar America, 1945—1955 169 Black Resistance and Racial Liberation 169 The Journey of Reconciliation and the Origins of Nonviolent Direct Action 177 The Cold War, the NAACP, and the 1948 Election 180 Race, Culture, and Society in Postwar America 192 The Brown Decision 196 CHAPTER SIX: The Civil Rights Revolution Begins, 1955—1962 208 The Montgomery Bus Boycott 208 School Desegragation and the White Backlash 220 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference 226 The Sit-In Movement and the Origins of SNCC 228 The Freedom Rides and the Kennedy Administration 234 The Albany Defeat 243 CHAPTER SEVEN: The Civil Rights Revolution Triumphs, 1963—1965 252 The Birmingham Campaign 252 The March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act 263 Mississippi Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party 271 Selma and the Voting Rights Act 284 CHAPTER EIGHT: Black Power and the End of the Civil Rights Era 293 Urban Riots and Inner City Poverty 293 Malcolm X and the Resurgence of Black Nationalist Populism 299 Black Power and the Decline of SNCC 306 The Center Cannot Hold: The Last Years of Martin Luther King 312 Things Fall Apart: The End of the Civil Right Era 320 CONCLUSION THOUGHTS 332 Bibliographical Essay 342 Index 354 Photographs follow pages 73 and 207