Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950.

Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950. Edited by Charles M. Payne and Adam Green. (New York and London: New York University Press, c. 2003. Pp. viii, 584. Paper, $24.00, ISBN 0-8147-6703-6; cloth $70.00, ISBN 0-8147-6702-8.)

This collection explores the complexities of African American activism between 1850 and 1950. The book is divided into three parts. Part one, with tour essays, covers the topics of slavery, memory, and the democratic impulse; part two, with seven essays, focuses on "forgotten movements" in African American history (p. v); and part three, with five essays, assesses the impact of World War II and the years that followed, culminating in the civil rights movement. The editors, Charles M. Payne and Adam Green, offer a brief introduction to each section to place the essays in historical perspective.

Scholars have long had an interest in the activist tradition among black Americans seeking to bring reform to America and to advance black political, social, and economic equality. Certainly black protest, both in the urban North and South, and in the rural experience, largely in the South, greatly shaped the African American worldview from the 1850s to the 1950s. Part one, with essays by Peter H. Wood, David S. Cecelski, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Thavolia Glymph, notes the continuing significance of slavery, the role of memory of this institution, and the quest for democratic reforms to end slavery and advance the lives of all Americans. Essays in this section examine American slave-labor camps; the story of Abraham H. Galloway of Wilmington, North Carolina; the meaning of the emancipation era; and the central place of the Civil War in black historical memory in the South. Collectively the essays explore the following themes: What does slavery mean in American life? How did black leadership develop in the United States during slavery? And how have American perspectives on the meaning of freedom changed from one generation to the next?

In part two, seven scholars--Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, Ula Y. Taylor, Paul Ortiz, Greta de Jong, Brian Kelly, Michael Honey, and Winston James--assess the impact of forgotten movements in African American history. The authors examine the Elaine, Arkansas, Massacre of 1919; the lives and works of the former wives of Marcus Garvey; voter registration efforts in Florida, 1919-1920; the New Deal organizational efforts of the Louisiana Farmers' Union; black workers in Birmingham, Alabama, 1900-1921; black factory workers, black elites, and union organizing in the age of segregation; and the roles of black socialist pioneers, 1877-1930. These essays help to focus historical discussion on the rural and urban realities facing black people in the early twentieth century. As a group the essays ask a central question: how did some movements among black American activists become historically lost over time? The problem suggests that each generation of historians and the lay community must make an extra effort to uncover hidden or underreported issues in the black experience.

Finally, part three explores the continuing effect of the World War II era. This period was key in the timeline of politics and activism among black Americans. Yet black Americans were faced with special challenges during this period, including complex issues surrounding the modern black middle class and the question of how long oppression lasts. Is oppression ever overcome in the history of a people? Five scholars trace the impact of this historical era--Tracy E. K'Meyer, Caroline Emmons, Wim Roefs, Scott A. Sandage, and Charise Cheney. Essays cover the struggle for civil rights in Louisville, Kentucky, 1914-1956; the life of Harry T. Moore, a Florida activist who was murdered along with his wife in 1951 for movement work; the contributions of John McCray, a journalist and activist, and the Lighthouse and Informer, 1939-1954, in South Carolina; the historical significance of the Lincoln Memorial in African American memory; and the role of gender among black nationalists in this country.

Readers will find this volume a helpful companion to capturing an under-explored area of black activism from the slavery era to the mid-twentieth century. These essays are especially helpful in assessing the rural historical experiences of African Americans and advancing our common historical understanding and knowledge on key aspects of this element of the black experience. They also note the continuing impact of the urban experience on black Americans and that collectively historians must address both the urban and the rural dimensions of the black historical experience if, in the final analysis, we are to have a clear understanding of the total black experience in America from the past to the present.

University of Missouri, Columbia

JULIUS E. THOMPSON