Race, Place, and Family: Narratives of the Civil Rights Movement in Brownsville, Tennessee, and the Nation

Abstract

This dissertation examines the Civil Rights Movement through the experiences of primarily two African American families with roots in Brownsville, Tennessee. This study, based on archival research and oral histories, chronicles three generations of citizens affiliated with the NAACP whose translocal civil rights struggles include both the South and urban North. It highlights various tactics individuals used to secure their rights and identifies African American entrepreneurship as a form of non-violent protest, focusing on the African American funeral home as a gateway enterprise which contributed to the establishment of other businesses or "staple institutions" that helped to sustain the Black community during segregation.