Seven social movements that changed America
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2025]
Physical Description
515 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Summary
How do social movements arise, wield power, and decline? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these questions in a groundbreaking work, narrating the stories of many of America's most influential twentieth-century social movements. Beginning with the turn-of-the-century settlement house movement, Gordon then scrutinizes the 1920s Ku Klux Klan and its successors, the violent American fascist groups of the 1930s. Profiles of two Depression-era movements follow--the Townsend campaign that brought us Social Security and the creation of unemployment aid. Proceeding then to the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, which inspired the civil rights movement and launched Martin Luther King Jr.'s career, the narrative barrels into the 1960s-70s with Cesar Chavez's farmworkers' union. The concluding chapter illumines the 1970s women's liberation movement through the dramatic story of the Boston-area organizations Bread and Roses and the Combahee River Collective. Separately and together, these seven chapters animate American history, reminding us of the power of collective activism.
Contents
- Creating free spaces
- From Ku Klux Klan to American fascists, 1920s-1930s
- Trustees of the nation
- Shareholders in relief
- Leadership and followership
- Leadership and followership continued
- Consciousness-raising as activism.