History professor publishes pioneering book on civil rights in 1930s and 1940s

Posted: 01/13/2012

A groundbreaking book that expands both the history and conventional thinking about the nation’s civil rights movement has been published by Erik Gellman, assistant professor of history at Roosevelt University.

Challenging the popular idea that momentum for civil rights in America began during the 1960s, Gellman’s Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights explores the emergence and activities of a militant civil rights movement during the Depression and World War II era.

“The 1930s and ’40s were a time in our nation when activists made civil rights a national priority,” said Gellman, who spent more than a decade researching and writing about the early history of the nation’s African-American civil rights movement.

To honor the Martin Luther King holiday, Gellman will discuss the book in the context of a lecture on “Martin Luther King’s Vision and Beyond: The Long Civil Rights Movement as a Blueprint for Action in the 21st Century” at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 17 in Roosevelt University’s 10th floor Murray Green Library, 430 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago. The public is invited to attend. A question-and-answer book signing will follow the lecture.

“The 1930s and 1940s are a time in history that usually evokes discussions about the New Deal, labor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the book shows that African Americans and those on the left dedicated themselves to civil rights and working-class protest movements to expand America’s democracy,” Gellman said.

Part of the prestigious John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights looks at formation of the National Negro Congress (NNC), an organization made up of black intellectuals, labor organizers, artists and other activists during the Depression who demanded a “second emancipation” in America.

Aiming to bring down Jim Crow laws and practices, the book explores how this movement sought to coordinate and catalyze anti-racist activism across America, establishing significant grassroots campaigns in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Va., and Columbia, S.C.

“While activists during this time period didn’t achieve their ultimate goal - the dismantling of Jim Crow - they did complete many impressive feats that are not just an antecedent to the Sixties civil rights movement,” Gellman said.

Published by the University of North Carolina Press, the book is already receiving praise from nationally known African-American civil rights scholars including well-known expert and author Michael Honey, who said: “This book immeasurably strengthens our understanding of the ‘long civil rights movement’…It is a spectacular addition to the literature on civil rights unionism and African American history.”

"Erik S. Gellman’s Death Blow to Jim Crow breaks new ground and enriches our understanding of the militant, radical, antiracism reformers who founded and nurtured the National Negro Congress and its affiliate, the Southern Negro Youth Congress, during the 1930s and 1940s…This perceptive and persuasive, beautifully written and meticulously researched history…is essential reading for those seeking deeper insights into the explosive and transformative era that ushered in the modern freedom movement,” added Darlene Clark Hine, the distinguished Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University.

The book is available at www.uncpress.unc.edu or www.amazon.com and will be sold at a special discount for the Jan. 17 event. Gellman is also the co-author of the new book The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America, a narrative that weaves together the stories of Owen Whitfield, an African American Southern Baptist minister and Claude Williams, a white Southern Presbyterian preacher. Both were activists among agricultural and urban workers during the time period.

For more information, contact Gellman at egellman@roosevelt.edu or Laura Janota at 312-341-3511.

Chicago 430 S. Michigan Ave.Chicago, IL 60605(312) 341-3500 Directions & Maps

Schaumburg 1400 N. Roosevelt Blvd.Schaumburg, IL 60173(847) 619-7300 Directions & Maps

Roosevelt Online http://www.roosevelt.edu/ruonline/