Death blow to Jim Crow the National Negro Congress and the rise of militant civil rights - Gellman, Erik S. (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Labor's triumph and the "black magna carta" in the Chicago region, 1936-1939 -- Negro youth strike back against the "Virginia way" in Richmond, 1937-1940 -- Civilization has taken a holiday : violence and security in the nation's capital -- Interlude : black and white, red, and over? : the Congress splits in Washington -- Finding the north star in New York : home front battles during the Second World War -- The world's "firing line" : South Carolina's postwar internationalism -- Conclusion : gone with what wind?
In this manuscript, Erik Gellman examines the civil rights movement that occurred a generation before the better known movement in the 1960s. In 1936, Black intellectuals, labor organizers, and artists formed the National Negro Congress (NNC), a group that demanded a "second emancipation" for African Americans. For the next decade, the NNC and its offshoot, the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) sought to coordinate anti-racist activism of its more than 75 local councils into a national movement against Jim Crow