A history of the civil rights movement in Tuskegee, Ala., which was
unique among Southern towns because in it lived the faculty of
Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute: a well-educated,
economically secure black middle class. This is one of the current
historical assessments of the civil rights movement that extends
its beginnings beyond the sit-in of 1960 and Brown vs. Board of
Education of 1954 - back to the 1940s and even the '30s. The title
refers to the Old Testament prophet Hosea, who blamed the
Israelites' breaking of the covenant for their crop failures: "They
sowed to the wind and now reap the whirlwind." Norell applies the
metaphor to the civil rights movement, in which whites reaped a
whirlwind of conflict that four generations of exploitation and
discrimination had sown. Tuskegee is the county seat of Macon
County, which had the highest percentage of blacks of any county in
the nation (84%). Conditions there for blacks may perhaps be judged
from the fact that the county sheriffs were paid according to the
number of arrests they made. Norell takes the reader from the
founding of Tuskegee Institute as a school for black teachers in
the 1880s to the disappointments delivered by its civil rights
movement in the 1980s. Blacks have gained political power, but poor
blacks have learned that political power does not necessarily lead
to economic betterment. To many blacks, "voting seemed an empty
exercise if it did not lead to economic progress." White fear of
black domination led to an exodus from Tuskegee: in 1980 there were
only 600 whites, less than half the white population a decade
earlier. A superb, often exciting rendition of the complex
interactions and misunderstandings between blacks and whites in a
key Southern town. Historian Norell has captured both the public
and private personas of the leading black and white players, which
makes his story come alive. The Tuskegee saga would make a good
movie. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this classic and compelling account, Robert Norrell traces the
course of the civil rights movement in Tuskegee, Alabama, capturing
both the unique aspects of this key Southern town's experience and
the elements that it shared with other communities during this
period. Home to Booker T. Washington's famed Tuskegee Institute,
the town of Tuskegee boasted an unusually large professional class
of African Americans, whose economic security and level of
education provided a base for challenging the authority of white
conservative officials. Offering sensitive portrayals of both black
and white figures, Norrell takes the reader from the founding of
the Institute in 1881 and early attempts to create a harmonious
society based on the separation of the races to the successes and
disappointments delivered by the civil rights movement in the
1960s. First published in 1985, Reaping the Whirlwind has been
updated for this edition. In a newly expanded final chapter,
Norrell brings the story up to the present, examining the long-term
performance of black officials, the evolution of voting rights
policies, the changing economy, and the continuing struggle for
school integration in Tuskegee in the 1980s and 1990s. |A narrative
history of the civil rights movement in Tuskegee, Alabama, home to
an unusually large professional class of African Americans capable
of challenging the authority of white conservatives.
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