The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement (The Human Tradition in America) Hardcover – September 11, 2006 9780742544086

As an important corrective to the traditional “great man” studies, these essays emphasize the importance of grassroots actions and individual agency in the effort to bring about national civil renewal. These biographies assert the importance of individuals on the local level working towards civil rights and the influence that this primarily African-American movement had on others including La Raza, the Native American Movement, feminism, and gay rights.

Through engaging biographies of such varied individuals as Abraham Galloway, Ida B. Wells, James K. Vardaman, Jose Angel Gutierrez, and Sylvia Rivera, Glisson widens the scope of most Civil Rights studies beyond the 1954–1965 time frame to include its full history since the Civil War. By widening the time frame studied, these essays underscore the difficult, often unrewarded and generational nature of social change.