"Resurrects from the annals of history one of the most understudied yet important black college administrators and race leaders of the twentieth century."--Crystal R. Sanders, author of A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle "Provides a deep exploration of black higher education and its uneasy relationship with white politicians in the Jim Crow South. Always the pragmatist, Shepard, sometimes wisely and at other times unwisely, implemented strategies to establish and sustain important educational institutions in a major southern state."--Dennis C....

"A vital work: one that links and contextualizes activism in the present with over one hundred years of organizing, resisting, and rebelling against racial injustice."--Sara Rzeszutek Haviland, author of James and Esther Cooper Jackson: Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement This volume expands the chronology and geography of the black freedom struggle beyond the traditional emphasis on the old South and the years between 1954 and 1968. Beginning as far back as the nineteenth century, and analyzing case studies from southern, northern, and border states, these essays...

James E. Shepard of North Carolina, like Booker T. Washington in Alabama, was one of the most influential African Americans in his state. This study is more than a biography of an influential African American, but an analytical study of a black leader during the age of Jim Crow in the South.