562. This
week we talk to
Greta de Jong about civil rights in North Louisiana. "Civil rights in North LA. Examining African Americans' struggles for
freedom and justice in rural Louisiana during the Jim Crow and civil
rights eras, Greta de Jong illuminates the connections between the
informal strategies of resistance that black people pursued in the early
twentieth century and the mass protests that emerged in the 1950s and
1960s. Using evidence drawn from oral histories and a wide range of
other sources, she demonstrates that rural African Americans were
politically aware and active long before civil rights organizers arrived
in the region in the 1960s to encourage voter registration and
demonstrations against segregation." "Greta de Jong is Associate
Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on the
connections between race and class and the ways that African Americans
have fought for economic as well as political rights from the end of
slavery through the twenty-first century. She is the author of
A Different Day: African American Struggles for Justice in Rural Louisiana, 1900-1970 (2002)."