Book cover of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt

Book description

Winner of the 2010 Clinton Jackson Coley Award for the best book on local history from the Alabama Historical Association

A remarkable story of the people of rural Lowndes County, a small Southern town, who in 1966 organized a radical experiment in democratic politics
Early in 1966, African Americans…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Bloody Lowndes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Poor Black farmers and sharecroppers lined the route of Martin Luther King’s famous march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965, an epic protest that drew thousands of white supporters and led to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act. Hasan Jeffries beautifully recaptures these local people’s struggle for political power and economic self-determination. This book made plain to me as has no other just why and where Black Power was the only option. Local people creatively won support from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and challenged Lowndes County’s courthouse cliques and agricultural committees, powerful agencies set up…

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