![]() Far from being a complete break with the past, their work was based directly on the work of an older generation of activists, people like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry. The young organizers who were the engines of change in the state were not following any charismatic national leader. Payne overturns familiar ideas about community activism in the 1960s. Payne brilliantly brings to life the tradition of grassroots African American activism, long practiced yet poorly understood. The leaders were ordinary women and men - sharecroppers, domestics, high school students, beauticians, independent farmers - committed to organizing the civil rights struggle house by house, block by block, relationship by relationship. ![]() ![]() Using wide-ranging archival work and extensive interviews with movement participants, Charles Payne uncovers a chapter of American social history forged locally, in places like Greenwood, Mississippi, where countless unsung African Americans risked their lives for the freedom struggle. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom offers the history of the early civil rights movement in the South. ![]()
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