Foot Soldiers for Democracy

Horace Huntley is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, the director of the Oral History Project at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and the coeditor of Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham.John W. McKerley is a faculty research associate and assistant editor with the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, College Park

• Preface   . . . viiAcknowledgments   . . . xiiIntroductionFoot Soldiers for Democracy, by Robin D. G. Kelley   . . . xiiiLook for Them in the Whirlwind, by Rose Freeman Massey   . . . xviiiList of Abbreviations   . . . xxvChronology of Events from April and May 1963   . . . xxviIllustrations   . . . xxxiiiEmma Smith Young   . . . 1Eva Lou Billingsley Russell   . . . 10Jimmie Lucille Spencer Hooks   . . . 17Nims E. Gay   . . . 26James Armstrong   . . . 35Joe Hendricks   . . . 46James Summerville   . . . 53Henry M. Goodgame Sr.   . . . 57Joe N. Dickson   . . . 63Johnnie McKinstry Summerville   . . . 78Jonathan McPherson   . . . 82LaVerne Revis Martin   . . . 88Paul Littlejohn   . . . 93Carlton Reese   . . . 97Elizabeth Fitts   . . . 106James Roberson   . . . 111Annetta Streeter Gary   . . . 115James Ware and Melvin Ware   . . . 122Willie A. Casey   . . . 126James W, Stewart   . . . 132Gwendolyn Sanders Gamble   . . . 142Carolyn Maull McKinstry   . . . 150Carl Grace   . . . 161Malcolm Hooks   . . . 169Miriam Taylor McClendon   . . . 174Shirley Smith Miller   . . . 182Washington Booker III   . . . 187Carrie Delores Hamilton Lock   . . . 200Audrey Faye Hendricks   . . . 208Epilogue   . . . 213Index   . . . 217

"The oral histories excerpted here document the rich organizational networks that suffused the community, and the 'sphere of self-organized workers' activity' largely ignored by historians that was key to the movement's tenacity and ultimate successes."--Anarcho-Syndicalist Review"This book is a must-read for anyone searching for firsthand knowledge of how hard minorities had to fight for equality in a land of opportunity. It is also a must-read for those seeking to understand minorities' shared experience of never giving up."--U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review"An excellent text for those seeking a work that offers something besides the standard narrative."--Southern Historian "This volume contains a remarkable cross section of firsthand accounts that will interest scholars of the black freedom struggle, especially those attuned to bottom-up views of black history and generational change."--The Journal of Southern History "This outstanding work is an enormous contribution to the literature on the civil rights movement, and it will provide rich material for debate as well as inspiration for years to come."--Paul Ortiz, author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920