From the publisher’s description:
The civil rights movement that looms over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This rich history of that early movement introduces us to a contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals who employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down. In a dramatic narrative Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore deftly shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights.
Notable Book (2009)
Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth (NHC Fellow, 2006–07). Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN 9780393062441.