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Crusades for Freedom: Memphis and the Political Transformation of the American South. By G. Wayne Dowdy. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Pp. x, 183. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-60473-423-2.)
G. Wayne Dowdy acknowledges diat Crusades for Freedom: Memphis and the Political Transformation of the American South is "a sequel of sorts" to his eartier volume, Mayor Crump Don 't Like It: Machine Politics in Memphis (Jackson, 2006), which focused on the Bluff City under die rule of boss Edward Hull Crump (p. vü). Crusades for Freedom documents the period between 1948 and 1968, detailing the collapse of Crump's machine and, in its wake, the growing political influence of African Americans and the Republican Party. Dowdy claims ttiat, despite the city's small size, Memphis was an important "battleground in the struggle to create a strong two-party South" (p. vii). He also notes that, while the city was not a...