John Dittmer – författare

"This is the best treatment scholarshave of black life in a southern state at the beginning of the twentieth century."--  Howard N. Rabinowitz,Journal of American History"The author shows clearly and forcefullythe ways in which this [white] system abused and controlled the black lowercaste in Georgia." -- Lester C. Lamon, American Historical Review.  "Dittmer has a faculty for lucid exposition of complicated subjects. This isespecially true of the sections on segregation, racial politics, disfranchisement,woman's suffrage and prohitibion, the neo-slavery in agriculture, and the racialviolence whose threat and reality hung like a pall over all of Georgia throughoutthe period." -- Donald L. Grant, Georgia Historical Quarterly.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Mississippi Historical Society McLemore Prize, the Herbert G. Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize.Publication of this book was supported by a grant from DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.

In his seminal article "Freedom Then, Freedom Now," renowned civil rights historian Steven F. Lawson described his vision for the future study of the civil rights movement. Lawson called for a deeper examination of the social, economic, and political factors that influenced the movement's development and growth. He urged his fellow scholars to connect the "local with the national, the political with the social," and to investigate the ideological origins of the civil rights movement, its internal dynamics, the role of women, and the significance of gender and sexuality. In Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, editors Danielle L. McGuire and John Dittmer follow Lawson's example, bringing together the best new scholarship on the modern civil rights movement. The work expands our understanding of the movement by engaging issues of local and national politics, gender and race relations, family, community, and sexuality. The volume addresses cultural, legal, and social developments and also investigates the roots of the movement. Each essay highlights important moments in the history of the struggle, from the impact of the Young Women's Christian Association on integration to the use of the arts as a form of activism. Freedom Rights not only answers Lawson's call for a more dynamic, interactive history of the civil rights movement, but it also helps redefine the field.