The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World
The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World
Southern Civil Rights and Anticolonialism, 1937–1955
“A fresh and engaging study that illuminates the important, related, yet neglected histories of the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Council on African Affairs. Especially noteworthy is the perceptive treatment of the linkages between these related organizations’ domestic and international politics.”—Waldo E. Martin, coauthor of Freedom on My Mind: A History of African Americans with Documents
“A welcome addition to the growing body of literature that examines the interplay between civil rights and international affairs.”—John Kirk, author of Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970
“Swindall puts the ‘long civil rights’ movement on a dynamic new world map. Her meticulous use of archival materials opens up new roots and routes for scholars of American race history.”—Bill Mullen, author of Afro-Orientalism
The Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Council on African Affairs were two organizations created as part of the early civil rights efforts to address race and labor issues during the Great Depression. They fought within a leftist, Pan-African framework against disenfranchisement, segregation, labor exploitation, and colonialism.
By situating the development of the SNYC and the Council on African Affairs within the scope of the long civil rights movement, Lindsey Swindall reveals how these groups conceptualized the U.S. South as being central to their vision of a global African diaspora. Both organizations illustrate well the progressive collaborations that maintained an international awareness during World War II. Cleavages from anti-radical repression in the postwar years are also evident in the dismantling of these groups when they became casualties of the early Cold War.
By highlighting the cooperation that occurred between progressive activists from the Popular Front to the 1960s, Swindall adds to our understanding of the intergenerational nature of civil rights and anticolonial organizing.
A volume in the series New Perspectives on the History of the South, edited by John David Smith
Lindsey R. Swindall, teaching assistant professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, is the author of The Politics of Paul Robeson’s Othello and Paul Robeson: A Life of Activism and Art.
