This volume explores the roles black women played in their communities' social movements and the consequences of elevating women into positions of visibility and leadership. Martha Jones reveals how, throughout the 19th century, the "woman question" was at the core of movements against slavery and for civil rights.

Scope and content: Series I. Autobiography of Norvelle Dismukes, written in 1982, provides a detailed account of her life, her family, her education, and her career. Generally written in chronological order, she has a novelist's eye for detail, and provides rich emotional and physical descriptions about the people in her life and her surroundings. She writes about her family origins in Wilcox County, Alabama; her adoption by relatives in Nashville,...

Discusses seven leaders of the civil rights movement, including Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.

A group portrait of leading civil rights activists who comprised the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Draws on original sources to illuminate how these young Americans challenged the way America thinks about civil rights, politics, and moral obligations.