Defining the Struggle

Since its founding in 1910—the same year as another national organization devoted to the economic and social welfare aspects of race advancement, the National Urban League—the NAACP has been viewed as the vanguard national civil rights organization in American history. But these two flagship institutions were not the first important national organizations devoted to advancing the cause of racial justice. Instead, it was even earlier groups — including the NationalAfro American League, the National Afro American Council, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Niagara Movement - that developed and transmitted to the NAACP and National Urban League foundational ideas about law and lawyering that these latter organizations would then pursue. With unparalleled scholarly depth, Defining the Struggle explores these forerunner organizations whose contributions in shaping early twentieth century national civil rights organizing have largely been forgotten today. It examines the motivations of their leaders, the initiatives they undertook, and the ideas about law and racial justice activism they developed and passed on to future generations. In so doing, it sheds new light on how these early origins helped set the path for twentiethcentury legal civil rights activism in the United States.

Susan Carle's Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 18801915 provides a useful entry point into an examination of the legal history of civil rights and its relationship to the historiography of the long civil rights movement., Susan Carle writes a clear and convincing history of the first generation of civil rights organizers and advocates-the movement that started the Movement. We all stand on their shoulders. Let us remember their names and know their stories., Susan Carle's study of nineteenth-century social and legal activism is ground breaking. By shedding new light on the historical roots of the Second Reconstruction and mapping the intellectual links between modern civil rights groups and long-forgotten visionaries, Carle has made a remarkable contribution., Susan Carle vividly recounts the long and difficult struggle for African American voting rights in the United States. Carle's inspiring stories of heroic figures who persevered in the face of seemingly impossible odds are not only amazing; they are also timely. In light of the Supreme Court's recent decisions, this is a must read for activists who seek to engage in new forms of organizing, and for scholars who seek to produce new venues for creative thinking about what it means to be a full citizen of the United States., This remarkable book lifts the veil that has obscured from view an entire early generation of civil rights lawyers. We learn here of organizations like the Afro-American League, the Afro-American Council, the National Association of Colored Women, the Niagara Movement, and the newly-formed NAACP and Urban League. Working in often desperate circumstances against formidable opposition, these tiny groups pioneered the civil rights movements' strategies of litigating test cases, mobilizing for legislative gains, and building social-service institutions. Their goals were not just legal equality, but economic justice and social welfare. It is astonishing to discover, thanks to Susan Carle's very moving as well as illuminating account, how much they were able to accomplish.

Susan Carle teaches legal ethics, anti-discrimination law, labor and employment law, and torts at American University Washington College of Law. She writes primarily about the history of social change lawyering, anti-discrimination law, and topics at the intersections between civil rights, employment, and labor law. In the past she has been a community organizer, civil rights lawyer, and union-side labor lawyer.