In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South.

In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South. By Cynthia Griggs Fleming. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., c. 2004. Pp. xx, 349. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-7425-0811-0; cloth, $72.00, ISBN 0-7425-0810-2.)

Cynthia Griggs Fleming opens In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South with a poem written by her grandfather entitled "You'll Git Dar after While" and a declaration that "black rural dwellers have continued to be ignored in the national debate on race" (p. x). This study is a noticeably personal story. Simultaneously it is a well-written and compelling narrative history that seeks to write the black rural poor into a body of historical literature that focuses largely on the work, influence, and mythology of organizations, leaders, and seminal locales in the fight for civil rights. Thirty-eight miles from Selma, Alabama, lay rural Wilcox County and its seat, Camden. Since the deterioration of citizenship rights following Reconstruction, African Americans there have wrestled against the many manifestations of white racism--from outright violence to fraudulent elections and single-minded resistance to school desegregation. Fleming weaves invaluable and unique individual stories into those of the more familiar sort, those that mirror the struggles of African Americans throughout the Deep South.

Emphasizing the obstacles and the frustrations of Wilcox folk rather than the promising (and strikingly recent) signs of progress--such as the election of the county's first black elected official (the sheriff in 1979) and black representatives to the Wilcox County Commission and School Board (1980 and 1982, respectively)--Fleming understandably leans heavily on oral histories as her main primary sources. What drives this work is the general absence of attention to the rural story, as the plethora of sources available to historians of Selma or Montgomery is absent in a rural setting. Fleming also examines newspaper articles, published government and commission reports, records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Southern Christian Leadership Conference, archival sources, local histories, documentaries, and published manuscripts--both old and recent. As an examination of the rural South, this book gives remarkably little attention to the (social or cultural) economy of Wilcox County (though the New Deal is significantly addressed). However, Fleming highlights Wilcox Countians' long history of fervor for equal education. This thoroughly researched aspect of the story is especially revelatory.

It would have been worthwhile for the author to have added some comparative material and to acknowledge and make greater use of the histories of rural black southerners that do exist. After all, rural people in Louisiana or Mississippi also lived in isolation, laced the closing of schools rather than their desegregation, and risked their lives and livelihoods to vote. Still, Fleming's study does achieve its goal of telling compelling stories that fill some voids in the literature and give deserved attention to an underrepresented group.

Lacking a bibliography and a list of primary sources, In the Shadow of Selma is organized both thematically and chronologically. Six chapters focus on the years bookended by slavery and the school desegregation crisis of 1972. Two final chapters deal with recent history: "After the Movement" and "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same"--the latter, a title that conveys both realism and hopelessness to this reader.

Xavier University of Louisiana 

WENDY GAUDIN