Refuse to stand silently by : an oral history of grass roots social activism in America, 1921-64

All the men and women who tell their stories in Refuse to Stand Silently By played critical roles in some of the first--and most decisive--struggles for social justice America has experienced in this century. Yet none of them were elected or otherwise sanctioned to act on behalf of others. These are people who faced injustice and refused to stand silently by and allow it to continue. In this engrossing oral history they give not only firsthand reminiscences of seminal events in the American labor and civil rights movements, but forthright narratives of their lives, their family and educational backgrounds, their early influences, and the unlikely roads that led them to activism. Through their words, a history of grass roots social activism in America emerges. Rosa Parks tells of the days preceding the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, precipitated by her refusal to give up her seat on a city bus. At that time she was a member of the Montgomery NAACP, struggling to help blacks register to vote in the face of poll taxes, racist registration committees, and the Ku Klux Klan at the polls. Her memories detail the period that would, in many ways, fuel blacks' outrage in the South du