Book

Waging a good war : a military history of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968

Call Number

  • 323.1196 R5399 (CEN, OSH)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.

Physical Description

xx, 422 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white), maps ; 24 cm

Summary

"#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. In Waging a Good War , the bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a fresh perspective on America's greatest moral revolution--the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s--and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war reporter, draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization--the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. An engaging storyteller, Ricks deftly narrates the Movement's triumphs and defeats. He follows King and other key figures from Montgomery to Memphis, demonstrating that Gandhian nonviolence was a philosophy of active, not passive, resistance--involving the bold and sustained confrontation of the Movement's adversaries, both on the ground and in the court of public opinion. While bringing legends such as Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis into new focus, Ricks also highlights lesser-known figures who played critical roles in fashioning nonviolence into an effective tool--the activists James Lawson, James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Septima Clark foremost among them. He also offers a new understanding of the Movement's later difficulties as internal disputes and white backlash intensified. Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America's civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social change--and one that offers vital lessons for our own time."--

Contents

  • Preface : a different angle on the civil rights movement
  • Introduction : stirrings, 1865-1954
  • Montgomery, 1955-1956 : besieging a city
  • Nashville, 1960 : developing a nonviolent cadre
  • The Freedom Rides, 1961 : a raid behind enemy lines
  • The Albany movement, 1961-1962 : stymied by an adaptive adversary
  • Ole Miss, 1962 : a racial confrontation that lacked movement input
  • Early Birmingham, Spring 1963 : putting children on the front lines
  • The March on Washington, mid-1963 : taking the national stage
  • Later Birmingham, Fall 1963 : counter-escalation against children
  • Oxford, Ohio, June 1964 : SNCC prepares to assault a state
  • The Battle of Mississippi, July and August 1964 : Freedom Summer
  • Selma, 1965 : victory, and factionalization
  • Chicago, 1966 : a bridge too far
  • Memphis, 1968 : the costs of it all
  • Epilogue: the good war today.

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