Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang

Clarence Lang's insightful, engagingly written, and well-researched study will prove indispensable to scholars and students of postwar American history.' 'A major work of scholarship that will transform historical understanding of the pivotal role that class politics played in both civil rights and Black Power activism in the United States. Franklin, University of California, Riverside The book is a major contribution to our understanding of the black working class insurgency that underpinned the civil rights and Black Power campaigns of the twentieth century.' Through detailed analysis of black working class mobilization from the depression years to the advent of Black Power, award-winning historian Clarence Lang describes how the advances made in earlier decades were undermined by a black middle class agenda that focused on the narrow aims of black capitalists and politicians. 'This is a theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly documented historical case study of the movements for African American liberation in St. Photo courtesy Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri, St. Grassroots at the Gateway charts the development of this race-class divide, offering an uncommon reading of not only the civil rights movement but also the emergence and consolidation of a black working class. Louis' economic power brokers whom local black freedom fighters challenged.

This richly researched book delves into African American oral histories, records of activist individuals and organizations, archives of the black advocacy press, and even the records of the St.

Instead, black social movements of the working class were distinct from-and at times in conflict with-those of the middle class. Louis in the border state of Missouri as a case study, author Clarence Lang undermines the notion that a unified 'black community' engaged in the push for equality, justice, and respect.

Breaking new ground in the field of Black Freedom Studies, Grassroots at the Gateway reveals how urban black working-class communities, cultures, and institutions propelled the major African American social movements in the period between the Great Depression and the end of the Great Society.

Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang