Gilmore, Glenda, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. W.W. Norton Press, 2009.

Summary
Gilmore’s Defying Dixie explores the radical origins of the civil rights movement that have been marginalized or largely forgotten by popular memory that emphasizes the “big figures” of the 1950s. Agitating for the right to vote and desegregating education had roots farther back than the 1950s, reaching back to the 1920s and 1930s. It was during this time that civil rights activists were shaped by radical ideologies, such as the communists who all along argued for equality (Kelley, D.G.). Gilmore’s book begins here, “at the radical edges of a human rights movement after World War I, with Communists who promoted and practiced racial equality and considered the South crucial to their success in elevating labor and overthrowing the capitalist system.” (4) The popular front of the 1930s expanded the activist network further. By extending the narrative and including “exiled” black and white Southerners, Gilmore argues that “the presence of a radical left, in this case a Communist Left, redefined the debate over white supremacy and hastened its end.” (6) Their strong ideology of social equality gave Southerners a vision and a threat. Gilmore also argues that by including Communists, “We can see the conservative aspects of the NAACP’s litigation strategy and the bankruptcy of moderate organizations such as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in the face of European Fascism.” (7) Extending the narrative also challenges the argument that the Cold War facilitated the civil rights movement. Gilmore argues (rightly so) that African Americans were always internationally focused. The only difference during the Cold War was federal intervention in the South, though limited. It also radically affected the tactics and (communist) ideologies of civil rights activists (red scare). Gilmore thus contends “by giving the movement a 1950s start, we discount the forces that generated and sustained human rights during the 1930s and 1940s and privilege its religious, middle class, and male roots.” (9) Furthermore, a narrow focus on the 1950s portrays the Black Power movement as an aberration, when its radicalism had always been a part of the movement.