An Army of Lions

The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP

Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Law, Civil Rights, History, Americas, United States, 20th Century
Cover of the book An Army of Lions by Shawn Leigh Alexander, University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Shawn Leigh Alexander ISBN: 9780812205725
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Publication: September 28, 2011
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press Language: English
Author: Shawn Leigh Alexander
ISBN: 9780812205725
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication: September 28, 2011
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English

In January 1890, journalist T. Thomas Fortune stood before a delegation of African American activists in Chicago and declared, "We know our rights and have the courage to defend them," as together they formed the Afro-American League, the nation's first national civil rights organization. Over the next two decades, Fortune and his fellow activists organized, agitated, and, in the process, created the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.

An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP traces the history of this first generation of activists and the organizations they formed to give the most comprehensive account of black America's struggle for civil rights from the end of Reconstruction to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Here a host of leaders neglected by posterity—Bishop Alexander Walters, Mary Church Terrell, Jesse Lawson, Lewis G. Jordan, Kelly Miller, George H. White, Frederick McGhee, Archibald Grimké—worked alongside the more familiar figures of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington, who are viewed through a fresh lens.

As Jim Crow curtailed modes of political protest and legal redress, members of the Afro-American League and the organizations that formed in its wake—including the Afro-American Council, the Niagara Movement, the Constitution League, and the Committee of Twelve—used propaganda, moral suasion, boycotts, lobbying, electoral office, and the courts, as well as the call for self-defense, to end disfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence. In the process, the League and the organizations it spawned provided the ideological and strategic blueprint of the NAACP and the struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century, demonstrating that there was significant and effective agitation during "the age of accommodation."

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In January 1890, journalist T. Thomas Fortune stood before a delegation of African American activists in Chicago and declared, "We know our rights and have the courage to defend them," as together they formed the Afro-American League, the nation's first national civil rights organization. Over the next two decades, Fortune and his fellow activists organized, agitated, and, in the process, created the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.

An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP traces the history of this first generation of activists and the organizations they formed to give the most comprehensive account of black America's struggle for civil rights from the end of Reconstruction to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Here a host of leaders neglected by posterity—Bishop Alexander Walters, Mary Church Terrell, Jesse Lawson, Lewis G. Jordan, Kelly Miller, George H. White, Frederick McGhee, Archibald Grimké—worked alongside the more familiar figures of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington, who are viewed through a fresh lens.

As Jim Crow curtailed modes of political protest and legal redress, members of the Afro-American League and the organizations that formed in its wake—including the Afro-American Council, the Niagara Movement, the Constitution League, and the Committee of Twelve—used propaganda, moral suasion, boycotts, lobbying, electoral office, and the courts, as well as the call for self-defense, to end disfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence. In the process, the League and the organizations it spawned provided the ideological and strategic blueprint of the NAACP and the struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century, demonstrating that there was significant and effective agitation during "the age of accommodation."

More books from University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Cover of the book Citizenship and the Origins of Women's History in the United States by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book A New World of Labor by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Lucretia Mott's Heresy by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book God's Country by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Confessions of Faith in Early Modern England by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Novels in the Time of Democratic Writing by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Force and Freedom by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Between Theater and Anthropology by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Roots of the Arab Spring by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Holy Warriors by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Death by Effigy by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Queer Philologies by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Profound Science and Elegant Literature by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book "The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman" and Other Queer Nineteenth-Century Short Stories by Shawn Leigh Alexander
Cover of the book Representation by Shawn Leigh Alexander
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy