"Wright vividly portrays the clash between racist militants and blacks who would not submit to terror. The book makes clear the brutality concealed beneath the surface veneer of moderation." -- Journal of Southern History

In this investigative look into Kentucky's race relations from the end of the Civil War to 1940, George C. Wright brings to light a consistent pattern of legally sanctioned and extralegal violence employed to ensure that blacks knew their "place" after the war.

In the first study of its kind to target the racial patterns of a specific state, Wright demonstrates that...

In the period between the Civil War and the Great Depression, Louisville, Kentucky was host to what George C. Wright calls "a polite form of racism." There were no lynchings or race riots, and to a great extent, Louisville blacks escaped the harsh violence that was a fact of life for blacks in the Deep South. Furthermore, black Louisvillians consistently enjoyed and exercised an oft-contested but never effectively retracted enfranchisement. However, their votes usually did not amount to any real political leverage, and there were no radical improvements in civil rights during this period....

Published by the Kentucky Historical Society & Distributed by the University Press of Kentucky

This is the second part of a two-volume study which covers the entire spectrum of the black experience in Kentucky from earliest exploration and settlement to 1980. Mandated and partially funded by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1978, this pathbreaking work is the most comprehensive consideration of the subject ever undertaken. It fills a long-recognized void in Kentucky history. George C. Wright describes the struggle of blacks in the twentieth century to achieve the promise of...