Details the career of Lula B. White, executive secretary of the Houston, Texas, branch of the NAACP. White was a significant force in the struggle against Jim Crow laws during the 1940s and 1950s. Places her in her proper perspectives in Texas, Southern, African American, women's, and general Americ

African American women have played significant roles in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality, but relatively little is known about many of these leaders and activists. Most accounts of the civil rights movement focus on male leaders and the organizations they led, leaving a dearth of information about the countless black women who were the backbone of the struggle in local communities across the country. At the local level women helped mold and shape the direction the movement would take. Lulu B. White was one of those women in the civil rights movement in Texas. Executive secretary...

WINNER 2013 of the Liz Carpenter Award for Research in the History of Women, presented by the Texas State Historical Association Throughout the South, black women were crucial to the Civil Rights Movement, serving as grassroots and organizational leaders. They protested, participated, sat in, mobilized, created, energized, led particular efforts, and served as bridge builders to the rest of the community. Ignored at the time by white politicians and the media alike, with few exceptions they worked behind the scenes to effect the changes all in the movement sought. Until relatively recently,...

"Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares," originally published in 1985, was the first book to make an in-depth examination of the cadre of African American lawmakers in Texas after the Civil War. Those few books that addressed the subject at all treated black legislators "en masse" and offered little or nothing about their individual histories. Early scholars tended to present isolated events of the violence and political deterrents inflicted upon black voters but said very little about how these obstacles affected black lawmakers.
Author Merline Pitre has departed from this traditional...