Degrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912
 
Spanning the half-century after the Civil War, Degrees of Freedom draws a rare picture of black experience in a northern state and of the nature of black disconent and action within a predominantly white, ostensibly progressive society. Within this absorbing, often surprising, narrative, we meet "ordinary" citizens, like former slave and early settler Jim Thompson and black barbers catering to a white clientele, but also personages of national stature such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois, all of whom championed civil rights in Minnesota. And we see how, in a state where racial prejudice and oppression wore a liberal mask, black settlers and entrepreneurs, politicians, and activists maneurvered within a restricted political arena to bring about real and lasting change. 
 
Author: William D. Green
Published By: University of Minnesota Press, 2015
Format: Paperback, 314 pages