The civil rights movement occupies a prominent place in popular thinking and scholarly work on post-1945 U.S. history. Yet the dominant narrative of the movement remains that of a nonviolent movement born in the South during the 1950s that emerged triumphant in the early 1960s, only to be derailed by the twin forces of Black Power and white backlash when it sought to move outside the South after 1965. African American protest and political movements outside the South appear as ancillary and subsequent to the 'real' movement in the South, despite the fact that black activism existed in the North, Midwest, and West in the 1940s, and persisted well into the 1970s. This book brings together new scholarship on black social movements outside the South to rethink the civil rights narrative and the place of race in recent history. Each chapter focuses on a different location and movement outside the South, revealing distinctive forms of U.S. racism according to place and the varieties of tactics and ideologies that community members used to attack these inequalities, to show that the civil rights movement was indeed a national movement for racial justice and liberation.

This is the first anthology of scholarship on civil rights activity outside the South

Preface; K.Cleaver Foreword; R.D.G.Kelley Introduction; K.Woodard, J.Theoharis & M.Countryman 'Double V for Victory' Mobilizes Black Detroit, 1941-1948; B.Bates The US Organization, Black Power Politics, and the United Front Ideal in Los Angeles and Beyond; S.Brown University of Michigan: From Protest to Politics: Community Control and the Black Power Movement in Philadelphia, 1965-1970; M.Countryman Social Justice in the City: The Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr., and the Rise of a Black Nationalist Coalition in Detroit; A.D.Dillard Radicalism in the late-1960s: A Chapter in the History of the Young Lords Party in New York; J.Fernandez The Right to Shop: Welfare, Consumerism, and Northern Protest; F.Kornbluth Black Revolutionaries on Chicago's West Side: A History of the Illinois Black Panther Party; J.Rice University of Michigan: Prospects for Freedom: African American Political Culture in Oakland from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to the Black 'The Nation Makes Me Whole': Women in the Nation of Islam in Oakland, California, 1965-1970; U.Taylor 'I Wish I Was in the South': How Boston's School Desegregation Complicates the Civil Rights Paradigm; J.Theoharis The Search for Resident Power in Baltimore's Public Housing; R.Y.Williams The Dynamics of Black Power in the Newark Convention Movement; K.Woodard Afterword; M.Marable