Summary

Better Day Coming recounts the endeavors of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in a society that, after the collapse of Reconstruction, sanctioned racial segregation, racial discrimination, and white political supremacy. It examines the leaders, movements, and strategies that shaped the black vision of equality. Beginning with the campaign against lynching launched by Ida B. Wells in the 1890s, it examines the tradition of militant protest that in 1909 led to the formation of the NAACP and which over the next fifty years formed a powerful foundation for civil rights efforts. Better Day Coming also offers a sympathetic portrait of Marcus Garvey while concluding that black nationalism, both in the 1920s and the 1960s, was doomed to failure. Paying tribute to the role of the Communist party in raising the fight against racism to a higher level of militancy during the 1930s, the book analyzes the contradictory effects of World War II, the cold war, and McCarthyism on black activism during the 1940s. Providing a detailed account of the civil rights movement and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., Better Day Coming