Before Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia(Gender and American Culture (eBook))

Long before the Montgomery bus boycott ushered in the modern civil rights movement, black and white southerners struggled to forge interracial democracy in America. This innovative book examines the most successful interracial coalition in the nineteenth-century South, Virginia's Readjuster Party, and uncovers a surprising degree of fluidity in postemancipation southern politics. Melding social, cultural, and political history, Jane Dailey chronicles the Readjusters' efforts to foster political cooperation across the color line. She demonstrates that the power of racial rhetoric, and the divisiveness of racial politics, derived from the everyday experiences of individual Virginians--from their local encounters on the sidewalk, before the magistrate's bench, in the schoolroom. In the process, she reveals the power of black and white southerners to both create and resist new systems of racial discrimination. The story of the Readjusters shows how hard white southerners had to work to establish racial domination after emancipation, and how passionately black southerners fought each and every infringement of their rights as Americans.

Review :
"At last, the full story of one of the great trailblazers of the twentieth century. No one did more than the mixed-race, transsexual, writer, lawyer, activist, and priest Pauli Murray to advance the cause of human rights in her time. Murray spent her life arguing that race, gender, and economic inequality are interconnected and devising strategies for battling all forms of discrimination. Rosalind Rosenberg has combined an intimate portrait of Murray's own intersectional identity with a panoramic history of the legal and political causes she furthered. Jane Crow represents a tremendous accomplishment. It is one of those rarities: a truly necessary book."--Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "An activist and lawyer, feminist strategist and advocate for racial justice, poet, priest, and theologian, Pauli Murray was a singular figure who presciently pioneered and indelibly influenced many of the most transformative legal and social changes of the twentieth century. Rosalind Rosenberg's sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Murray's personal struggles, political missions, and spiritual evolution suffuses her biography with humanity and urgency."--Serena Mayeri, author of Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution "An authoritative history of a remarkable person and an able recounting of a still-relevant era, Jane Crow should be required reading for anyone who seeks better understanding of social and legal change in the twentieth-century America. The book explains, in compelling prose, how Pauli Murray's experiences with race and gender inspired profound intellectual insights that altered the courses of the civil rights and women's rights movements."--Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement "Until relatively recently, Pauli Murray was little known except, perhaps, in some legal and Episcopal circles. Today, she is rapidly emerging as an icon of the twentieth century. Rosalind Rosenberg, in her scrupulously researched and eminently readable book, invites the reader into an intimate yet respectful engagement with the dynamics of race, gender, class, sexuality, and the spirited drive in human beings that motivates each of us to live into the fullness of the gift of our lives, whatever the cost. As Rosenberg shows, this is exactly what Pauli Murray did."--The Rt. Rev. Mary D. Glasspool, Assistant Bishop, Diocese of New York