Beyond Atlanta: the Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980.

Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980. By Stephen G. N. Tuck. (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, c. 2001. Pp. xiv, 341. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8203-2528-7; cloth, $50.00, ISBN 0-8203-2265-2.)

Stephen G. N. Tuck's Beyond Atlanta further challenges the old view that the civil rights movement began in Montgomery, ended in Selma, and was led by Martin Luther King Jr. In this survey of Georgia civil rights activity between 1940 and 1980, Tuck argues that "the state perspective is not merely a midpoint between the local and national" but the "only one that provides a real understanding of events" (p. 8). While his findings echo themes from other state studies, such as the dynamism of local NAACP chapters, he also reveals a narrative unique to Georgia.

According to Tuck, the 1940s represented a brief window of opportunity as expectations raised by the war, the election of the relatively liberal Governor Ellis Arnall, and the elimination of the white primary sparked voter registration drives and activism, including occasional attempts to coordinate statewide activities. In the mid-1940s, however, such efforts stalled, as the election of Governors Eugene and then Herman Talmadge unleashed a wave of white supremacist activity, and postwar civil rights ambitions gave way to more fundamental struggles to keep local organizations alive. Georgia's white backlash in the 1950s, Tuck argues, was not so much a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education as a continuation of white reaction to protest begun in the 1940s. For the 1960s, Tuck reconstructs the emergence of a mass movement that incorporated students, working-class people, and direct action tactics. Though the NAACP remained the most prominent organization and SCLC and SNCC played supporting roles, Tuck demonstrates that in Georgia, as in Mississippi, the movement consisted primarily of local people with local leadership.

An advantage of Tuck's approach lies in its ability to reveal many lesser-known local struggles, such as the successful desegregation of lunch counters, buses, city facilities, and city jobs in Macon, as well as the failure of similarly styled protests elsewhere. Tuck's careful reconstruction of the SNCC Southwest Georgia Project (based on an extraordinary cache of records and interviews) and SNCC's failure to overcome the poverty and powerlessness of the black community, the fierce resistance of whites, and the apathy of some state-level leadership provides new insight into why direct action protest failed. A disadvantage, however, is that a statewide sweep does not always capture the full texture of a community's race relations. For example, Tuck's account of Rome. Georgia, credits the city with a moderation that avoided lengthy arrest and included the early desegregation of the public library. He does not mention that Rome authorities actually sentenced dozens of teenage sit-in participants to jail time. Nor does he mention that, in contrast to the library policy of 1963, only a year later city authorities chose to shut down city swimming pools rather than integrate. In Georgia history, Rome may still qualify as % haven of racial moderation," but persistent white resistance on other fronts suggests that a more complex and perhaps revealing story about race relations lies behind the survey technique (p. 142). In compiling a statewide narrative of civil rights specific to Georgia, however, Tuck has provided a great historical service that is sure to provoke more study.

Georgia State University 

MICHELLE BRATTAIN