Awards

• Winner of American Sociological Association Oliver Cromwell Cox Award 2007
• Winner of American Sociological Association Oliver Cromwell Cox Award 2007.

Overview

From the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, millions of American men and women participated in fraternal associations - self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provided aid to members, enacted group rituals, and engaged in community service. Even more than whites did, African Americans embraced this type of association; indeed, fraternal lodges rivaled churches as centers of black community life in cities, towns, and rural areas alike. Using an unprecedented variety of secondary and primary sources - including old documents, pictures, and ribbon-badges found in eBay auctions - this book tells the story of the most visible African American fraternal associations. The authors demonstrate how African American fraternal groups played key roles in the struggle for civil rights and racial integration. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, white legislatures passed laws to outlaw the use of important fraternal names and symbols by blacks. But blacks successfully fought back. Employing lawyers who in some cases went on to work for the NAACP, black fraternalists took their cases all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in their favor. At the height of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, they marched on Washington and supported the lawsuits through lobbying and demonstrations that finally led to legal equality. This unique book reveals a little-known chapter in the story of civic democracy and racial equality in America.

Full Product Details

9780691122991

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Reviews

Heavily researched and illuminating throughout, this unique study is not necessarily a book for the masses, but for those, mostly in academia, interested in examining a little-considered dimension in the complex history of the civil rights movement, and out civil society as a whole. Publishers Weekly This excellent, very readable, scholarly book fills many gaps in understanding the African American community. Choice

Heavily researched and illuminating throughout, this unique study is not necessarily a book for the masses, but for those, mostly in academia, interested in examining a little-considered dimension in the complex history of the civil rights movement, and out civil society as a whole. -- Publishers Weekly This excellent, very readable, scholarly book fills many gaps in understanding the African American community. -- Choice

Author Information

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. Ariane Liazos received her Ph.D. in history from Harvard and is currently an independent scholar. Marshall Ganz is lecturer in public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

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