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" Before Riverside: "
Portlock, John S.
Borus, Daniel H
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1105371
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2307785878
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| Main Entry
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Borus, Daniel H
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Portlock, John S.
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| Title & Author
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Before Riverside:\ Portlock, John S.Borus, Daniel H
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| College
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University of Rochester
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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378
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| Abstract
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On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered what would be remembered as one of the most strident and forthright speeches against the Vietnam War. So arresting was the speech one could hardly be blamed for thinking black antiwar activism was born on that night in New York City. Of course, it wasn’t. Blacks had been calling down wars for centuries; and not only that, but also linking those wars to their own domestic struggle for civil rights. Dr. King had not been the first, nor would he be the last who would intuit a connection between peace and civil rights. Before Riverside returns readers to April 1917, almost fifty years to the day before Dr. King’s Riverside address, to chronicle the half century of black antiwar activism leading up to King’s dissent. I argue that not only did blacks, including A. Philip Randolph, Hubert Harrison, Elijah Muhammad, Bayard Rustin, Charlotta Bass, and Coretta Scott King, oppose war, but I also argue that their opposition importantly shaped the attendant civil rights movement during the fifty years covered. As well, I contend that we ignore black antiwar activism at our peril, for indeed, the history of the civil rights movement is only part told without an understanding of the key role the black antiwar movement played in the struggle for black freedom in the 20th century. To make these arguments, I have relied heavily on primary source documentation, including oral histories, letters, organizational records, speeches, and more.
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| Subject
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African American studies
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American history
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