Part II: A New Look at the Civil Rights Movement: A Review of Susan D. Carle’s Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880-1915

Susan D. Carle, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law, aptly describes the burgeoning progress of the civil rights movement in her book: Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice.[1]  Carle takes her readers through the intricate and at times overlooked progressions of the early rallying attempts of organizations such as the National Urban League (NUL), the Afro-American League (AAL), the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the Niagara Movement. She paints a well-rounded picture of the preliminary work that went into the creation and intricate inner-workings of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and ultimately the impactful Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s.

           

Part I: A New Look at the Civil Rights Movement: A Review of Susan D. Carle’s Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880-1915

When you think about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, initial thoughts focus on the 1960s and the political turmoil that was going on during that time frame.  It was the post-Reconstruction era and despite African Americans’ new freedoms, they were still being treated as second-class citizens and being denied their rights.  The focus of the Civil Rights Movement was about achieving legal equality and abolishing racial discrimination, particularly in the southern states.  Immediate national organizations that come to mind are the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Black Panthers Party, and famous people of the era were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.  However, many people fail to take notice that the Civil Rights Movement began long before the 1960s.  

In Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880-1915, Susan D. Carle takes us back in time through a historical and strategic study of past national organizations that laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement that we learned about in history class.[1]  Specifically, she takes us through the early years of the Civil Rights Movement by focusing on important, but forgotten, figures and the late nineteenth and early twentieth century organizations that helped shape the ideas and plans that the NAACP, the National Urban League (NUL), and civil rights leaders used successfully.