Description

Some of the most important and littleknown activists of the 1960s were poor and workingclass radicals Inspired by the Civil Rights movement the Black Panthers and progressive populism they started to organize significant political struggles against racism and inequality during the 1960s and into the 1970s

Historians of the period have traditionally emphasized the work of white college activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality Poor and workingclass whites have often been painted as spectators reactionaries and even racists But authors James Tracy and Amy Sonnie disprove that narrative

Through over ten years of research interviewing activists along with unprecedented access to their personal archives Tracy and Sonnie tell a crucial untold story of the New Left Their deeply sourced narrative history shows how poor and workingclass individuals from diverse ethnic rural and urban backgrounds cooperated and drew strength from one another The groups they founded redefined community organizing and transformed the lives and communities they touched