| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 207 words from this article are provided below; about 399 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

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

Book Review

Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945–1986. By J. Todd Moye. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xii, 281 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2895-5. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5561-8.)
Home to the powerful segregationist U.S. senator James O. Eastland, the Citizens' Council movement, and the black activist Fannie Lou Hamer, Sunflower County, Mississippi, has received enough scholarly attention to render much of its civil rights movement's history familiar. However, J. Todd Moye provides the first overview of that story. Moreover, he increases our understanding of the American civil rights movement's complexity and addresses historiographical issues concerning its origins, aims, longevity, and class composition.	1
Moye's chronologically organized book draws on a wealth of oral histories and interviews to supplement, but not supplant, the written record. He argues that Sunflower County witnessed "three distinct though interconnected civil rights movements ... between 1945 and 1986" (p. 25). A very small group of relatively independent African American professionals and farm owners worked through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, militant segregationists forced the NAACP chapter into inactivity and pressured the white community into conformity.	. . .

There are about 399 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.