By Special to the Daily World
What would the story of Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights look like if historians shifted the focus from the NAACP and the U.S. Supreme Court to local change agents and law shapers? Noted legal scholar and historian Tomiko Brown-Nagin offers an enlightening exploration of the civil rights movement from the bottom up in “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement” (Oxford University Press; 2011; $34.95 Cloth). Based on rigorous research, this groundbreaking history celebrates the activism of local Black community members in Atlanta, the thriving metropolis of Black education and culture. From the 1940s through 1980, the courageous and tireless efforts of local lawyers, organizers, negotiators, students, and working-class men and women shook up the nation — and frequently clashed with the mandates of the national Black leadership.
The author will make her appearance at the Decatur Book Festival on Sept. 3; she’ll be speaking from 12:30-1:15 p.m. at the Decatur Conference Center Auditorium. For details and more information visit www.decaturbookfestival.com
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“In Atlanta, each wave of civil rights activists insisted on defining equality and the paths toward it in its own way, and each group gave rise to a new wave of activists with different priorities, strategies, and tactics,” Brown-Nagin reflects. “The gift they pass to the present generation is not a doctrinaire set of goals or methods but the tradition of protest itself, the will to object to injustice, in some way.”
Unfolding in three parts, “Courage to Dissent” begins after World War II with the roots of the quest to overcome racial discrimination and roots of the friction in Atlanta between lawyers and grassroots activists. From there, it moves on to the heat of the fight for racial justice in the 1960s, and the conflicts between local and national Black leaders over sit-ins and other direct protests. The final section delves into school desegregation, weighing the two-decade effort of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) to implement Brown v. Board of Education in Atlanta against bold local initiatives to improve and strengthen Black public schools. Throughout, Brown-Nagin discusses debates over politics, housing, education, and economic disparities — issues that continue to impact and incite debate
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