Sweet Land Of Liberty Chapter Summary

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue is a comprehensive description of the civil rights movement in the North. Sugrue shows Northern African Americans who assembled against racial inequality, but were excluded from postwar affluence. Through fine detail and eloquent style, Sugrue has explained the growth and hardships integral in the struggles for liberties of black Americans in the North. The author explores the many civil rights victories—such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Act of 1965—but also takes the reader on a journey of many lesser known issues that occurred throughout states in the North and Mid-west United States. Sugrue illustrates the struggles of black

Sugrue explains that integration and community control were never mutually exclusive, but as African Americans became progressively disheartened by the sluggish rate of integration, many began exploring economic expansion in their own neighborhoods. As the left began to become more outspoken, Black Power became the prevailing inclination in the North, and the civil rights efforts developed into a more militant movement. Whereas in the 1930s, black Americans had looked to the national government in order to help them with their struggles, many now began exploring their own neighborhoods for solutions. Though African Americans accomplished some advances by the 1970s—particularly an expanded political presence—Sugrue suggests that local black American communities did not possess the necessary means to resolve many of the issues that were facing them. With the onset of suburbanization and diminished federal funding throughout the 1970s and 1980s, many African American communities plummeted further into

The main individuals in the book, ranging from extreme to temperate and from integrationists to separatists, often bickered with one another about intentions and strategies and, at times, plotted against one other. This is indisputably a challenging tale to tell. It seems what ties this narrative together is that Sugrue has discovered that the civil rights movement in the North may not be as prevalent as it once was, but it still exists, nonetheless. Sugrue is cautious to refer to movements in the plural, instead one comprehensive Northern Civil Rights Movement is acknowledged. This is a captivating and tremendously important facet of the book. The author reveals that all of these diverse components fit into one extensive civil rights struggle of the North, even if they do not establish one vast continuous movement from the 1920s to the 1970s. Through a number of narratives that remain untold, partly stated, distorted, and misunderstood due to context, Sugrue illustrates that both the North and the South agonized through the same difficulties and the same battles. Equality in the North was not guilelessly and compassionately provided by white Northerners. The struggles that black Americans in the North endured and the shape of their protests were consistently molded by community circumstances and community