Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964-1972

by Susan Youngblood Ashmore

Overview

Carry It On is an in-depth study of how the local struggle for equality in Alabama fared in the wake of new federal laws—the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Susan Youngblood Ashmore provides a sharper definition to changes set in motion by the fall of legal segregation. She focuses her detailed story on the Alabama Black Belt and on the local projects funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the federal agency that supported programs in a variety of cities and towns in Alabama. Black Belt activists who used OEO funds understood that the structural underpinnings of poverty were key components of white supremacy, says Ashmore. They were motivated not only to end poverty but also to force local governments to comply with new federal legislation aimed at achieving racial equality on a number of fronts.

Ashmore looks closely at the interactions among local activists, elected officials, businesspeople, landowners, bureaucrats, and others who were involved in or affected by OEO projects. Carry It On offers a nuanced picture of the OEO, an agency too broadly criticized; a new look at the rise of southern Black Power; and a compelling portrait of local citizens struggling for control over their own lives. Ashmore provides a more complete understanding of how southerners worked to define for themselves how freedom would come during the years shaped by the civil rights movement and the war on poverty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820330518
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	07/15/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

SUSAN YOUNGBLOOD ASHMORE is a professor of history at Oxford College of Emory University. She is the author of Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964-1972.

SUSAN YOUNGBLOOD ASHMORE is a professor of history at Oxford College of Emory University. She is the author of Carry It On: The War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, 1964-1972.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations     ix
List of Abbreviations     xi
Acknowledgments     xiii
Map of Alabama's Black Belt Counties     xv
Prologue     1
Introduction: How Will Freedom Come?     7
Southern Accents: The Politics of Race and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964     17
At the Crossroads: The Programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Civil Rights in the South     54
Wallace's Infrastructure: Alabama State and Local Government Defiance of Federal Civil Rights Laws     86
In Selma's Wake: Organizing for Change in the Alabama Black Belt after the Selma to Montgomery March     124
In the Rurals: The Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty, and the 1966 Statewide Elections in the Alabama Black Belt     153
Agriculture Is More Than Farming: The Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association and the National Democratic Party of Alabama     198
Old Patterns and New Designs: Evaluating the Community Action Program in the Alabama Black Belt     253
Conclusion: Carry It On, Carry It On     281
Notes     295
Bibliography     369
Index     381

Editorial Reviews

Carry It On is right at the forefront of the next frontier of civil rights historiography: the period after the passage of national civil rights legislation and the great set-piece confrontations but before the advent of a New South biracial politics in the 1970s. Ashmore shows how the War on Poverty in Alabama was both a training ground for future African American politicians and a setting for the southern variant of Black Power.

author of The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940 - Tony Badger

Ashmore's well-written and -researched analysis of the War on Poverty in Alabama reveals how white leaders and bureaucrats subverted equal opportunity programs to serve their racist agenda and how African Americans counterattacked with limited success. Her book is a major contribution to the revisionist literature on the civil rights movement.

Pete Daniel of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South

[A] powerful indictment of the operation of the War on Poverty on the ground.

American Historical Review

Susan Youngblood Ashmore’s book is well worth the read. It is a detailed and intricate work of history that captures a complicated and important story of the civil rights movement from the macrolevel politics of presidential edicts and congressional fights to the microlevel role of how these policies influence activists and post-1965 Alabama civil rights work.

Journal of American Ethnic History - Nishani Frazier

A brief review cannot do justice to Ashmore's skill in weaving together the economic and political aspects of a still-unfinished effort to remake Alabama along more just and egalitarian lines. Her book signals a new level of breadth and sophistication in civil rights scholarship.

Journal of American History

Ashmore makes a compelling case in an exceptional narrative, and she provides an outstanding analysis of the intersection of politics and economics in the aftermath of federal intervention in American inequality.

Alabama Review

Ashmore's well-written and -researched analysis of the War on Poverty in Alabama reveals how white leaders and bureaucrats subverted equal opportunity programs to serve their racist agenda and how African Americans counterattacked with limited success. Her book is a major contribution to the revisionist literature on the civil rights movement.

Author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South - Pete Daniel

"Ashmore's well-written and -researched analysis of the War on Poverty in Alabama reveals how white leaders and bureaucrats subverted equal opportunity programs to serve their racist agenda and how African Americans counterattacked with limited success. Her book is a major contribution to the revisionist literature on the civil rights movement."—Pete Daniel, author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post–World War II South

"Carry It On is right at the forefront of the next frontier of civil rights historiography: the period after the passage of national civil rights legislation and the great set-piece confrontations but before the advent of a New South biracial politics in the 1970s. Ashmore shows how the War on Poverty in Alabama was both a training ground for future African American politicians and a setting for the southern variant of Black Power.”—Tony Badger, author of The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933–1940

"A brief review cannot do justice to Ashmore's skill in weaving together the economic and political aspects of a still-unfinished effort to remake Alabama along more just and egalitarian lines. Her book signals a new level of breadth and sophistication in civil rights scholarship."—Journal of American History

"[A] powerful indictment of the operation of the War on Poverty on the ground."—American Historical Review

"Ashmore makes a compelling case in an exceptional narrative, and she provides an outstanding analysis of the intersection of politics and economics in the aftermath of federal intervention in American inequality."--Alabama Review

“Susan Youngblood Ashmore’s book is well worth the read. It is a detailed and intricate work of history that captures a complicated and important story of the civil rights movement from the macrolevel politics of presidential edicts and congressional fights to the microlevel role of how these policies influence activists and post-1965 Alabama civil rights work.”—Nishani Frazier,  Journal of American Ethnic History

From the Publisher

Carry It On is right at the forefront of the next frontier of civil rights historiography: the period after the passage of national civil rights legislation and the great set-piece confrontations but before the advent of a New South biracial politics in the 1970s. Ashmore shows how the War on Poverty in Alabama was both a training ground for future African American politicians and a setting for the southern variant of Black Power.

author of The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 - Tony Badger

Ashmore's well-written and -researched analysis of the War on Poverty in Alabama reveals how white leaders and bureaucrats subverted equal opportunity programs to serve their racist agenda and how African Americans counterattacked with limited success. Her book is a major contribution to the revisionist literature on the civil rights movement.

Author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-World War II South - Pete Daniel