More Than One Struggle

“The distinctiveness of this clearly written, well organized volume is in the way it weaves together various campaigns for educational equity as different manifestations of an ongoing concern. . . . Dougherty’s valuable and exhaustively researched book should find a place in comprehensive collections on civil rights and school integration.” — CHOICE

“A rich picture of black activism in Milwaukee. . . . Dougherty effectively broadened the cast of historical players and presents new insights on the motivations, ideologies, and strategies of civil rights activists in the urban North.” — Ohio History

“Dougherty [feels] viewing the history of African American education solely in terms of the almost mythic Brown decision slights the length and complexity of the struggles for access to public education. . . . When historians focus on a landmark like Brown v. Board, they may neglect the details of the civil rights struggle in specific communities. Whether you lived through the period or not, therefore, the scope of Dougherty’s narrative is especially satisfying.” — Wisconsin Magazine of History

“More Than One Struggle is a model study of twentieth-century urban school reform movements. Unlike so many existing treatments of the civil rights era, Jack Dougherty convincingly argues that these movements entailed ongoing, multifaceted, and highly contested processes of historical change and memory. In his view, each successive campaign — for black public school teachers, integrated classrooms, and neighborhood schools — developed its own blind spots and established the context for future conflicts.” — Joe W. Trotter, Carnegie Mellon University