Lifting the Chains is a history of the Black experience in America since the Civil War, told by one of our most distinguished historians of modern America, William H. Chafe. Chafe highlights the role of all-black institutions--especially the churches, lodges, local gangs, neighborhood women's groups, and the Black college clubs that gathered at local pool halls--that talked up the issues, examined different courses of action, and then put their lives on the line to make change happen. Drawing on the tremendous oral history archives at Duke that Chafe founded and nurtured, the book includes unpublished oral histories of Black Activism.
