How does a state, tarnished with a racist, violent history, emerge from the modern civil rights movement with a reputation for tolerance and progression? Old South, New South, or Down South?: Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement exposes the image, illusion, and reality behind Florida’s hidden story of racial discrimination and violence. By exploring multiple perspectives on racially motivated events, such as black agency, political stonewalling, and racist assaults, this collection of nine essays reconceptualizes the civil rights legacy of the Sunshine State. Its dissection of local, isolated acts of rebellion reveals a strategic, political concealment of the once dominant, often overlooked, old south attitude towards race in Florida.
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Florida has a reputation among many of having experienced and emerged from the Civil Rights era as a "moderate" state in comparison to its southern neighbors. The nine essays presented here by Winsboro (history, Florida Gulf Coast U.) problematize that reputation, examining such topics the 1960 and 1964 race riots in Jacksonville, white supremacy and black agency in 20th century Miami, local-state cooperation in stonewalling desegregation following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, struggles to desegregate Daytona Beach, the legal battle over desegregating the U. of Florida's law school, civil rights struggles in the agricultural sector, the work of the social and agricultural organizations of land-owning black farmers from 1945 to 1960, the desegregation of public schools in Palm Beach County, and the role of racism and white supremacy in the gubernatorial election of 1964. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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