Finally finished
Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. This one took me longer than it normally would but it was a very good read. Though in the US the Civil Rights movement is portrayed as something that happened in the 1960's, this book reminded me that resistance to oppression had always been occuring by the every day man as well as highly moral and intelligent people whose words and statements amazed me. Though the book isn't about her, one woman particularly impressed me, Pauli Murray (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_Murray ). There are so many little tidbits of bright moments of clarity in this book to list, and I would recommend it for anyone.
The civil rights movement that looms over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This rich history of that early movement introduces us to a contentious mix of home-grown radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals who employed every strategy imaginable to take Dixie down. In a dramatic narrative Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore deftly shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights.
http://www.amazon.com/Defying-Dixie-Radical-Rights-1919-1950/dp/0393335321/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1334973813&sr=1-1-catcorr