What a Mighty Power We Can Be

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.

• List of Illustrations vii List of Tables ix Preface xi CHAPTER ONE: African American Fraternalism: A Missing Chapter in the Story of U.S. Civic Democracy 1 CHAPTER TWO: The Panorama of African American Fraternal Federations with the assistance of Jennifer Lynn Oser 21 CHAPTER THREE: African American Fraternals as Schools for Democracy 61 CHAPTER FOUR: Proprietors, Helpmates, and Pilgrims in Black and White Fraternal Rituals by Bayliss Camp and Orit Kent 95 CHAPTER FIVE: Defending the Legal Right to Organize 135 CHAPTER SIX: Black Fraternalists and the Mid-Twentieth-Century Movement for Civil Rights 174 CHAPTER SEVEN: The Achievements of African American Fraternalism 214 Notes 229 References 265 Index 283

Co-Winner of the 2007 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award, Race, Gender, and Class Sectionof the American Sociological Association "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