I am profoundly indebted to all of the freedom fighters who allowed me to interview them for this project: Ronnie Sigal Bouma, Harrison and Earnestine Brown, Wilbert Guillory, Clifton Hall, Eual Hall, John Henry Hall, Lawrence Hall, Lorin Hall, Eunice Hall Harris, Robert and Essie Mae Lewis, Eunice Paddio-Johnson, Meg Redden, Clarence Reed, Lola Stall-worth, Martin Williams, Moses Williams, and John Zippert. Their courage, intelligence, and insights contributed enormously to black people’s struggles for justice in Louisiana and to this book.
As with the freedom movement itself, economic factors played a significant part in shaping the possibilities and final results of my work. The Department of History and the Research and Graduate Studies Office at the Pennsylvania State University provided funding that helped me to complete much of the research for this project. Writing the first few drafts was greatly facilitated by a two-year predoctoral fellowship awarded by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. The J. N. G. Finley postdoctoral fellowship at George Mason University enabled me to work on revising the manuscript for publication, and some additional funds provided by the Department of History assisted in further research. At the turn of the millennium, a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Nevada, Reno, saved me from deportation just as my visa was due to expire and I thought my world was going to end. I am very grateful for the financial support I received from all of these institutions.
I will never be able to repay my debt to the commissary of my dissertation adviser and friend, Professor Nan Elizabeth Woodruff. I thank her with all my heart for her strong encouragement, rigorous criticisms, outrageous jokes and stories, and home-cooked meals. Thanks also to the other members of my doctoral committee, Professors Gary Cross, Thavolia Glymph, Daniel Letwin, and Clyde Woods, who carefully read the initial versions of this book and offered many thoughtful suggestions for improvement. Professor Charles Payne of Duke University made time in his busy schedule to serve as a special member on my committee, and his comments and assistance were greatly appreciated.
It is hard to imagine a more supportive environment than the one I enjoyed in the Department of History at the Pennsylvania State University during my graduate years. Faculty and fellow graduate students alike warmly welcomed me into their community, making the 6,700 mile separation from my Pacific island homeland much easier to endure than it might have been. When I left Pennsylvania, I never thought I would be so fortunate again—yet, incredibly, I was. Since 1997 I have relocated to a different university and a different part of the country almost every year, and every time I have found myself once more among extremely likable, generous, humorous, and inspiring colleagues. Through both formal seminars and informal conversations over coffee or lunch, their ideas and suggestions have helped to shape my thinking and contributed to the analysis presented in this book. Thank you Bill and Mary Ann Blair, Clarissa and John Confer, Gary and Eileen Gallagher, Charles (Middleton) Holden, Isabel Knight, Lynn Vacca, and Melissa Westrate at the Pennsylvania State University; Eve Agee, Reginald Butler, Lisa Lindquist Dorr, Scott French, John Gennari, Natasha Gray, Andrew Lewis, Rolland Murray, Vânia Penha-Lopes, Ian Strachan, Lisa Severson Swales, Phillip Troutman, and Robert Vinson at the Woodson Institute; Jack and Jane Censer, John Cheng, Robert DeCaroli, Matthew Karush, Alison Landsberg, Lawrence Levine, Roy Rosenzweig, Suzanne Smith, and Jeffrey Stewart at George Mason University; Scott Casper, Linda Curcio, Richard Davies, Andy Donson, Dennis Dworkin, Jerome Edwards, Frank Hartigan, Martha Hildreth, Carolyn Knapp, Bruce Moran, Elizabeth Raymond, Bill Rowley, Hugh Shapiro, Kevin Stevens, and Barbara Walker at the University of Nevada, Reno; and John Buenker, Frank Egerton, Laura Gellott, Jerry Greenfield, Oliver Hayward, and Steve Meyer at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Very special thanks to Mary Hebert at Louisiana State University, who assisted greatly with logistical matters during my research trips to Louisiana and who generously shared with me ideas and sources that grew out of her project on the civil rights movement in Baton Rouge.
I could not have asked for better administrative support than I received from the staffs of the universities where I worked, especially those whose jobs involved dealing with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on my behalf. In addition to answering my many questions and processing paperwork, some of them had to help me out of bureaucratic tangles more than once. If I could, I would give them all huge raises. My profound thanks to Maureen Costello, Karen Ebeling, Darla Franks, Lynn Moyer, Linda Ni-hart, Judy Shawley, and Karin Weaver at the Pennsylvania State University; Mary Farrer and Gail Shirley-Warren at the Woodson Institute; Julia Friedheim and Elizabeth Spencer at George Mason University; Debbie Hammersmith and Margaret Hellwarth at the University of Nevada, Reno; and Cheryl Gundersen and Luella Vines at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Librarians and archivists at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Amistad Research Center and the Howard Tilton Library at Tulane University, the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University, the New Orleans Public Library, the Earl K. Long Library at the University of New Orleans, the Center for Regional Studies at Southeastern Louisiana University, the Louisiana State Archives, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Headquarters, the National Agricultural Library, the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University, and the Fisk University Library Special Collections Department were universally helpful, often offering valuable advice and assistance as I searched for materials related to my work. In addition to allowing me access to their collections of taped interviews, archivists at the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History at Louisiana State University provided the recording equipment and guidance that enabled me to conduct my own. Staff members of the interlibrary loan services of Pattee Library at the Pennsylvania State University and Alderman Library at the University of Virginia displayed considerable tolerance in processing my requests for endless reels of microfilm and in helping me to track down obscure references.
I am deeply grateful to Pete Daniel of the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., as well as the anonymous reviewers for the University of North Carolina Press, for reading and commenting on various versions of the manuscript as it made its way to publication. Thanks also to the editors and production staff who helped to guide me in this process; David Perry, Mark Simpson-Vos, and Paula Wald made this experience less intimidating than I thought it would be, and their patience and understanding were much appreciated as I tried to meet deadlines in between job hunting, preparing courses, and moving from Virginia to Nevada to Wisconsin in the space of two years. Stevie Champion did an excellent job as copy-editor, eliminating many ill-phrased sentences in addition to ensuring consistency in the citations and slashing the number of endnotes in half.
Throughout my long exile in the United States, family and friends back home in New Zealand have helped me through periods of culture shock and homesickness, keeping me in touch with my kiwi roots through their letters, e-mail messages, and phone calls. My parents, Daphne and Keith de Jong, have supported and encouraged everything I have chosen to do, despite the years of separation this has meant. Lisette, Kris, Martin, and Kimmy de Jong remind me every time I speak to them that “car” is pronounced “cah,” not “carr”; the round things with the chocolate chips are called “biscuits,” not “cookies”; and VEGEMITE RULES. My two best buddies, Megan Claridge and Greg Locke, might have been geographically distant, but they were always present in some way when I needed them.
To everyone back home: Although I could have done without the phone calls at 2:00 A.M., my time, I thank you all. I love you, and I miss you.