Synopses & Reviews
Over the last several years, the traditional narrative of the civil rights movement as largely a southern phenomenon, organized primarily by male leaders, that roughly began with the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has been complicated by studies that root the movement in smaller communities across the country. These local movements had varying agendas and organizational development, geared to the particular circumstances, resources, and regions in which they operated. Local civil rights activists frequently worked in tandem with the national civil rights movement but often functioned autonomously from—and sometimes even at odds with—the national movement.
Together, the pathbreaking essays in Groundwork teach us that local civil rights activity was a vibrant component of the larger civil rights movement, and contributed greatly to its national successes. Individually, the pieces offer dramatic new insights about the civil rights movement, such as the fact that a militant black youth organization in Milwaukee was led by a white Catholic priest and in Cambridge, Maryland, by a middle-aged black woman; that a group of middle-class, professional black women spearheaded Jackson, Mississippi's movement for racial justice and made possible the continuation of the Freedom Rides, and that, despite protests from national headquarters, the Brooklyn chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality staged a dramatic act of civil disobedience at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York.
No previous volume has enabled readers to examine several different local movements together, and in so doing, Groundwork forges a far more comprehensive vision of the black freedom movement.
Review
"A signal contribution to the 'culture wars,' Dubin dispassionately examines the contemporary American museum as a battleground for the control of expression where elitist and populist camps clash over politically sensitive art. . . . His provocative study gives voice to curators and partisans on all points of the spectrum, making his book something of a lively free-for-all. . . . Cogently demonstrates that modern museums are crucibles for change rather than pleasant refuges, and that they are expanding the public's awareness that we live in an increasingly multicultural society and a multinational world."
"A lively and insightful new book. . . . Using an evenhanded journalistic approach and remarkably revealing interviews, Dubin documents how the institutions, run by idealistic and politically naive curators and exploited by conservative opponents, were marred by allowing minor conflicts to blow up into front-page stories. . . . Show[s] that while museum may be adept at producing spectacular displays of propaganda, they are often incapable of predicting the reactions of their audiences."
"Displays of Power is contentious, irreverent, and entertaining, but it is also absolutely serious. . . . Is the book useful or intimidating? Is it a cautionary tale or a diatribe against museum complacency? I believe that it is all of these things. . . . A cautionary tale told boisterously and wittily."
"Reveals how demands for accountability to various interest groups frequently lead to censorship [and] a retreat from shows that deal with complex social questions."
Review
"Reveals how demands for accountability to various interest groups frequently lead to censorship [and] a retreat from shows that deal with complex social questions." - Art in America
Review
“The thirteen essays in this important collection examine grass-roots struggles for racial justice throughout the United States from 1940-1980...Read together, these essays remind us that activism changes people as much as society.”
-Journal of American History,
Review
“The essays in Groundwork assert individually and collectively that at the root of any national movement for change are local activists working from the bottom up to change their communities first, then the world. This excellent and invigorating collection is crucial reading in an election year.”
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and author of America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans
Review
“A major contribution to the ever expanding historical literature of the modern African American freedom struggle. This book brings together outstanding examples of detailed and thoughtful studies of northern as well as southern local movements.”
-Clayborne Carson,Professor of History and Director, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University
Review
“Brilliantly conveys the vibrancy and creativity of community-based movements that transformed America's racial and civic landscape in the decades following World War II.”-Patricia Sullivan,author of Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years
Synopsis
Museums have become ground zero in America's culture wars. Whereas fierce public debates once centered on provocative work by upstart artists, the scrutiny has now expanded to mainstream cultural institutions and the ideas they present. In Displays of Power, Steven Dubin, whose Arresting Images was deemed "masterly" by the New York Times, examines the most controversial exhibitions of the 1990s. These include shows about ethnicity, slavery, Freud, the Old West, and the dropping of the atomic bomb by the Enola Gay. This new edition also includes a preface by the author detailing the recent Sensation! controversy at the Brooklyn Museum. Displays of Power draws directly upon interviews with many key combatants: museum administrators, community activists, curators, and scholars. It authoritatively analyzes these episodes of America struggling to redefine itself in the late 20th century.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-316) and index.
About the Author
Jeanne Theoharis is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and co-editor (with Komozi Woodard) of
Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements (NYU Press).
Komozi Woodard is professor of American history, public policy, and Africana studies at Sarah Lawrence College and author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics.
Charles M. Payne is the Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of African American studies, History and Sociology at Duke University. He is the author of the prize-winning Ive Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.