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Article: American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- December 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta. By Nan Elizabeth Woodruff (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. 282 pp. $39.95).
After investigating the massacre of hundreds of African Americans in Elaine, Arkansas in 1921, William Pickens, a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), dubbed the Mississippi River Valley, which included the town of Elaine, the "Congo of America." Pickens recognized that the brutal treatment that African American laborers suffered at the hands of whites in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta was on par with the ruthless treatment Congolese laborers endured ...