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From the cardinal Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated U.S. public education to the demonstrations, marches, and violence of the civil rights movement, A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda, Volume 1 traces the crusade for justice through the lens of major newspaper coverage to reveal the combating sectional press attitudes of the era. The book details attempts, blatant and subtle, to frame the major events of the movement in themes that have resonated from before, during, and since the Civil War. States' rights versus constitutional guarantees of freedom and equality, nullification versus federal authority, and regional social and cultural mores that buttressed the prejudices and political arguments of segregation and desegregation across the nation are some of the issues covered. This analysis of the press coverage of events and issues of that tumultuous period of U.S. history-by newspapers in the North, South, Midwest, and West-exposes perspectives and press routines that remain ingrained and thus relevant today, when journalistic treatment of political debate, ranging from traditional newspapers and broadcast platforms to those of cable, social media, and the Internet, continues to set an often volatile and oppositional political agenda.
List of contents
Preface - Foreword by Patrick S. Washburn - Introduction - The Brown Decision: Separate Not Equal - The Lynching of Emmett Till; A Bus Seat Denied - Brown's First Test: Riots in Little Rock - Activists Set the Table at Lunch Counters - Taking Freedom on the Road - Civil War II in Oxford - Martin Luther King, Jr., Orchestrates Protest Model - Wallace Makes a Stand; Assassination in Mississippi - On the Capital Stage; Some Afterthoughts - Index.
Report
"In his first of two volumes ... Hallock gathers a treasure-trove of primary sources from a dozen daily newspapers across the country. Through close analysis of news accounts, story placement, headlines, photos, and editorials, Hallock reveals in granular detail how the nation's mainstream press set the agenda, framed the debate, and both molded and reflected 'social, cultural, and political opinion' during key moments in civil rights era." -Sid Bedingfield, Journalism History 45(3), September 2019
