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E-book
Author Wolcott, Victoria W., author.

Title Living in the future : Utopianism and the long Civil Rights Movement / Victoria W. Wolcott
Published Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, [2022]
©2022

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Description 1 online resource (x, 272 pages) : illustrations, map
Contents The Workers -- The Cooperators -- The Divinites -- The Fellowshippers -- The Pacifists
Summary Living in the Future reveals the unexplored impact of utopian thought on the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Utopian thinking is often dismissed as unrealistic, overly idealized, and flat-out impractical--in short, wholly divorced from the urgent conditions of daily life. This is perhaps especially true when the utopian ideal in question is reforming and repairing the United States' bitter history of racial injustice. But as Victoria W. Wolcott provocatively argues, utopianism is actually the foundation of a rich and visionary worldview, one that specifically inspired the major figures of the Civil Rights Movement in ways that haven't yet been fully understood or appreciated. Wolcott makes clear that the idealism and pragmatism of the Civil Rights Movement were grounded in nothing less than an intensely utopian yearning. Key figures of the time, from Martin Luther King Jr. and Pauli Murray to Father Divine and Howard Thurman, all shared a belief in a radical pacificism that was both specifically utopian and deeply engaged in changing the current conditions of the existing world. Living in the Future recasts the various strains of mid-twentieth-century civil rights activism in a utopian light, revealing the power of dreaming in a profound and concrete fashion, one that can be emulated in other times that are desperate for change, like today
Analysis civil rights, utopia, cooperatives, pacifism, workers' education, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pauli Murray, Howard Thurman, Father Divine, Congress of Racial Equality
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Mrz 2022)
Subject Civil rights movements -- United States.
Pacifism -- United States
Utopias.
Utopias
SOCIAL SCIENCE / General.
Civil rights movements
Pacifism
Utopias
United States
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2021035849
ISBN 022681727X
9780226817279