I've got the light of freedom the organizing tradition and the Mississippi freedom struggle I have got the light of freedom Payne, Charles M. creator author. Alexander Street (Firm) text bibliography Electronic books. History cau 1995 monographic eng remote 1 online resource (xiv, 525 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, map This momentous work offers a groundbreaking history of the early civil rights movement in the South. Using wide-ranging archival work and extensive interviews with movement participants, Charles Payne uncovers a chapter of American social history forged locally, in places like Greenwood, Mississippi, where countless unsung African Americans risked their lives for the freedom struggle. The leaders were ordinary women and men--sharecroppers, domestics, high school students, beauticians, independent farmers--committed to organizing the civil rights struggle house by house, block by block, relationship by relationship. Payne brilliantly brings to life the tradition of grassroots African American activism, long practiced yet poorly understood. Payne overturns familiar ideas about community activism in the 1960s. The young organizers who were the engines of change in the state were not following any charismatic national leader. Far from being a complete break with the past, their work was based directly on the work of an older generation of activists, people like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry. These leaders set the standards of courage against which young organizers judged themselves they served as models of activism that balanced humanism with militance. While historians have commonly portrayed the movement leadership as male, ministerial, and well-educated, Payne finds that organizers in Mississippi and elsewhere in the most dangerous parts of the South looked for leadership to working-class rural Blacks, and especially to women. Payne also finds that Black churches, typically portrayed as frontrunners in the civil rights struggle, were in fact late supporters of the movement. Setting the stage -- Testing the limits: Black activism in postwar Mississippi -- Give light and the people will find a way: the roots of an organizing tradition -- Moving on Mississippi -- Greenwood: building on the past -- If you don't go, don't hinder me: the redefinition of leadership -- They kept the story before me: families and traditions -- Slow and respectful work: organizers and organizing -- A woman's war -- Transitions -- Carrying on: the politics of empowerment -- From SNCC to slick: the demoralization of the movement -- Mrs. Hamer is no longer relevant: the loss of the organizing tradition -- The rough draft of history -- Bibliographic essay: the social construction of history. Charles M. Payne. "A Centennial book"--Half title page Includes bibliographical references (pages 443-487) and index. Lillian Smith Book Award, 1995 n-us-ms Civil rights movements Mississippi History 20th century Civil rights workers Mississippi History 20th century African Americans Civil rights Mississippi Mississippi Race relations Civil rights movements Mississippi Greenwood History 20th century Greenwood (Miss.) Race relations Mouvements des droits de l'homme Mississippi Histoire 20e siècle Défenseurs des droits de l'homme Mississippi Histoire 20e siècle Noirs américains Droits Mississippi Mississippi Relations raciales POLITICAL SCIENCE Political Freedom & Security Civil Rights POLITICAL SCIENCE Political Freedom & Security Human Rights African Americans Civil rights Civil rights movements Civil rights workers Race relations Mississippi Mississippi Greenwood Civil Rights Movement Zwarten 1900-1999 fast E185.93.M6 P39 1995eb 323/.09762 HIS3021 HIS3021 15.85 I've got the light of freedom Payne, Charles M. Berkeley : University of California Press, ©1995 (DLC) 94024645 (OCoLC)31134152 Black thought and culture 0585122059 9780585122052 9780520085152 0520085159 9780520207066 0520207068 http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=https://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?BLTC;S16299 N$T 000807 20250331200911.7 in00005632092 eng