Dr. Charles McKinney, an associate professor of history and the Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies at Rhodes, has published “Dispatches From the Front: The Civil Rights Act and the Pursuit of Greater Freedom in a Small Southern City” in the Winter 2015 issue of History Now.
In his article, McKinney introduces the readers to the small town of Wilson, N.C., the summer of 1964. “While national political leaders debated the wisdom of civil rights legislation, the crisis deepened in this small community,” writes History Now editor Carol Berkin. “An attempt to have an African American church in nearby Elm City painted by a group of racially mixed volunteers led to a dangerous, and ultimately bizarre, confrontation between activists and Ku Klux Klan members. McKinney’s account of this confrontation is riveting in part because it is carefully placed in the larger context of the national debate over equality.”
History Now is an online web portal dedicated to the teaching of American History. View McKinney’s article here.