An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP

Shawn Leigh Alexander

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2012

An Army of Lions

The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP

Shawn Leigh Alexander

In the series Politics and Culture in Modern America

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205725

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1890, a delegation of African American activists formed the Afro-American League, the nation's first national civil rights organization. Over the course of nearly two decades, these activists fought to end disfranchisement and segregation, and to contest racial violence, creating the foundation for the NAACP and the modern civil rights movement.

Author / Editor information

Shawn Leigh Alexander is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Kansas.

Reviews

"In his excellent study, Shawn Leigh Alexander recovers the history of the civil rights organizations that emerged in the United States between the 1880s and 1909 . . . and in doing so sheds new light on the origins of the NAACP and its strategies for battling racism and on the nature of black politics during the Nadir."—Journal of American History

"An Army of Lions is a stunning and heroic work of research about one of the great 'origins' stories of American history. With remarkable originality, Alexander illuminates the grassroots civil rights organizations, leadership, and strategies in the nineteenth century, well before we typically think about those efforts. In the hands of this very talented historian, we see that T. Thomas Fortune and others struggled with the same questions that occupied the later generations of Du Bois and King. This is a scholarly achievement of the first order, with wide social and political implications today."—David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

"An Army of Lions should catapult its author, Shawn Leigh Alexander, to the forefront of young scholars of African American history. This brilliant narrative successfully demonstrates that black activists formed national civil rights organizations predating DuBois's Niagara Movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."—The North Carolina Historical Review

"In detailing the organizational history that lay behind the founding of the NAACP, An Army of Lions provides a compelling narrative that will appeal to historians, sociologists, and scholars of rhetoric alike. Alexander's account emphasizes both the continuity in rhetorical strategies between the Afro-American Council and the NAACP, and the institutional context from which these continuities emerged. But perhaps most importantly, Alexander turns our attention to early and often-overlooked episodes in civil rights history, episodes that contributed in important ways to our understanding of civil rights in the present."—Rhetoric & Public Affairs

"Alexander's major accomplishment is to place Booker T. Washington, seen as a conservative black leader, into a more progressive debate as he was often involved, albeit covertly, with more militant civil rights organizations."—American Historical Review

"With impressive detail, An Army of Lions documents a complex era in African American politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Alexander offers readers invaluable insights into how African American activists responded to the rising violence, disfranchisement, and segregation that characterized the Jim Crow era. Most importantly, he helps us to see how a broad range of early civil rights organizations were vying with one another for national leadership, political access, and mass support."—Martha S. Jones, University of Michigan

"Alexander's extremely rich monograph unravels the complex ideological, personal, and institutional features of grassroots African American civil rights organization, leadership, and protest during what historian Rayford W. Logan termed the 'nadir' of race relations in the US, the era of Jim Crow. . . . Alexander's great accomplishment is in his digging more deeply into the primary sources—especially newspapers—and in establishing a wider context for early black activist and protest groups that culminated in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."—Choice

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Chapter 1. Aceldama and the Black Response Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2. “Stand Their Ground on Th is Civil Rights Business” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Chapter 3. Interregnum and Resurrection Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	66
Chapter 4. Not Just “A Bubble in Soap Water” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	98
Chapter 5. To Awaken the Conscience of America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Chapter 6. Invasion of the Tuskegee Machine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Chapter 7. An Army of Mice or an Army of Lions? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	220
Chapter 8. “It Is Strike Now or Never” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	262
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	375
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	380

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 408
Illustrations
- Other: 22 illus.
Keywords: American History; Law; Public Policy; American Studies; Human Rights; Law; Political Science

eBook

Published: September 28, 2011
ISBN: 9780812205725