Battling The Plantation Mentality: Memphis And The Black Freedom Struggle

Exploring the notion of African American 'freedom' in postwar Memphis, Green demonstrates that the civil rights movement was battling an ongoing 'plantation mentality' based on race, gender, and power that permeated southern culture long before--and even after--the groundbreaking legislation of the mid-1960s. She points to the Memphis sanitation workers strike as a clarion example of how the movement fought for a black freedom that consisted of not only constitutional rights but also social and human rights.

African American freedom is often defined in terms of emancipation and civil rights legislation, but it did not arrive with the stroke of a pen or the rap of a gavel.