How Long? How Long?: African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights

A compelling and readable narrative history, How Long?, How Long? presents both a rethinking of social movement theory and a controversial thesis: that chroniclers have egregiously neglected the most important leaders of the civil-rights movement, African-American women, in favor of higher-profile African-American men and white women.

Robnett argues that the diversity of experiences of the movement's African-American women organizers has been underemphasized in favor of monolithic treatments of their femaleness and blackness. Drawing heavily on interviews with actual participants in the American civil rights movement, this work is the first investigation to provide an analysis of race, class, gender, and culture as substructures that shaped the organization and outcome of the civil rights movement and of the gendered relations and interactions among African-American activists.

A compelling narrative history as well as a major contribution to social movement and feminist theory, How Long?, How Long? will appeal to students and scholars of social activism, women's studies, American history, and African-American studies and to general readers interested in the perennially fascinating story of the American civil rights movement.