Freedom is a Constant Struggle: The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and its Legacy.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and Its Legacy. By Kenneth T. Andrews. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. xviii, 265. Paper, $21.00, ISBN 0-226-02043-6; cloth, $50.00, ISBN 0-226-02040-1.)

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and Its Legacy, by Kenneth T. Andrews, has many strengths and few weaknesses. As someone who also conducts research on Mississippi politics and civil rights, I was very impressed with the overall quality of this book's scope, purpose, and content.

The author examines the questions "Do social movements matter?" and "When people come together to challenge inequalities and face powerful authorities and opponents, what hope can they have of bringing about significant changes?" (p. 1). His primary objectives are to examine "the impacts of social movements through a multilayered study of the Mississippi civil rights movement.... [and] clarify our broader understanding of the ways in which movements transform social and political institutions as well as the constraints and obstacles that movements face when they try to do so" (p. 3).

Andrews provides a clear and concise explanation of his qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. A quantitative analysis of county-level data is necessary to examine the impact of the Mississippi civil rights movement on electoral politics, primary and secondary schools, and social politics. It also allows the author to support his arguments well and make the book less descriptive and more analytical. The qualitative research helps readers to understand the kind of changes that resulted from the movement and the obstacles that made it impossible to achieve some of the movement's goals.

The author's expertise on social movement literature, Mississippi politics, and the heights of the Mississippi civil rights movement is obvious, and his well-researched, well-written, multidisciplinary book will be useful for students and researchers in several fields. Andrews is a sociologist, but his book is also applicable for historical, political science, and sociological courses and research. His book also has an excellent theoretical and conceptual framework. Because of the author's knowledge of relevant literature on social movement and other theories, his book adds to the literature on the impact(s) of social movements in bringing about change(s).

As a political scientist, I found chapter five, "The Struggle for Political Power," to be one of the strongest. The ordinary least squares regression analysis (OLS regression) and tables provide support for the author's arguments about the factors that influenced black voter registration and predicted the number of black candidates running for office in 1967 and 1971 (p. 127). Readers less familiar with OLS regression can understand these findings because of the lucid way in which the results were reported.

Despite these strengths, several questions arise. On page 79, Andrews explains that Milestone, Mississippi, in Holmes County had a high proportion of black landowners. My research on power relationships among white elites and black non-elites in Mississippi has found that white landowners possessed the most wealth, power, and influence, especially in the Mississippi Delta region. Consequently, I wondered how African Americans were able to amass land in Holmes County and not in other counties. Throughout the state of Mississippi, whites historically made aggressive efforts to prevent blacks from owning land. I would assume that white elites objected to the ownership of land by blacks in Milestone. The author wrote, "Even limited landownership could provide insulation from white intimidation and harassment" (p. 79). How so? It seems that landownership would have resulted in more rather than less intimidation and harassment. Also, I would like to know more about the data depicted in table 5.2 (p. 128). For example, what factors determined the violent resistance index and the percentage urban variable? These are just a couple of minor questions I had after reading Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Overall it is an excellent book of superior quality.

SHARON D. WRIGHT AUSTIN

University of Florida