| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in America, 1909–1969. By Gilbert S. Jonas. (New York: Routledge, 2005. xviii, 240 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-415-94985-8.)

Freedom's Sword is an ambitious book that deserves much more careful and detailed analysis than is possible in a broad-brush seven-hundred-word review. There is material for discussion on almost every page. In this work Gilbert S. Jonas attempts to write a comprehensive history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1909 to 1969. This volume traces the development of the NAACP from a few hundred committed members (mostly whites) at its inception to four hundred and fifty thousand members (mostly blacks) by 1969. Jonas argues that when the call went out to establish the organization in 1909, the NAACP accepted its mission as one of advocacy against Jim Crow—publicizing the evils of lynching and exposing racial injustice in American society. Not long after its inception, it moved from advocacy to litigation—providing legal representation for blacks against racism. Success in court convinced the organization that Charles Hamilton Houston was correct in his assessment that the U.S. Supreme Court was the anvil on which to hammer out the constitutional rights of black Americans. How the organization used the Court to attack Jim Crow, who were the main players and foot soldiers— all are questions central to this study.

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