African American oral narratives
armed self-defense movement
black land ownership rights
black population
Capitol Building
Carroll County
Category=JHB
Circuit Clerk
Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights Peoples
Civil Rights Workers
COFO
Emmett Till
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grassroots civil rights organizing
Holmes County
Holmes County activism
Holmes County blacks
Ice Cream Parlor
Justice Department
Ku Klux Klans
Leflore County
Long Horns
Meredith March
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Na Stop
National Civil Rights Movement
Oral History
rural Mississippi resistance
Rural Organizing and Cultural Center
Saturday Night Specials
SNCC Worker
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
voter suppression history
White Civil Rights Workers
White Lady
White Law
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780367003975
- Weight: 530g
- Dimensions: 146 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Jun 2019
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Minds Stayed on Freedom is a vivid portrait of the civil rights struggle in one Mississippi county. While the national Movement has been painted in broad strokes by journalists and scholars, here the experiences of ordinary people bring definition to the lived texture of the Civil Rights Movement. Interviewed by local youths, Movement veterans recount how they overcame their fear in the face of terrorist resistance and collectively transformed the political and social fabric of their community. Their stories were repeated across the rural South, although seldom with the force and vigor experienced in Holmes County, located in the Mississippi plantation country. The teenagers who conducted this oral history project strike a rare balance between poignant prose and pathbreaking research. The detailed picture that emerges from the interviews brings into sharp relief issues that remain hazy in studies of national scope: the crucial resource of black land ownership, the limited extent of church involvement, the commitment to armed self-defense, the role of women, divisions of social class within the Movement, the range of white response and retaliation, and the interplay between direct action and legal tactics. Minds Stayed on Freedom provides plenty of fodder for academic analysis, but the interviews retain a raw, dramatic power. As project advisor Jay MacLeod of the Rural Organizing and Cultural Center writes in his introduction, "The drama in Holmes County began when a group of black farmers attempted to register to vote. Whites retaliated, pitting themselves directly against a small group of courageous black activists. The two sides battled each other. But they also battled for the hearts and minds of the black population. The tiny local Movement, armed with a vision of the future, tried to draw its people off the sidelines and into active involvement. Whites ntried to keep Holmes County blacks in their 'place' with a campaign of terror and intimidation. Minds Stayed
