“A must-read for everyone interested in understanding the grassroots, populist nature of the long civil rights movement.” — Journal of American History
“A deeply researched and beautifully crafted book. Artfully woven together, the chapters examine the NNC’s history and frame it as an important part of the African American freedom struggle. . . . Gellman has crafted a rich organizational study that is historically grounded and regionally specific that avoids romanticizing the labor-civil rights coalitions. . . . [It] makes clear the importance of the NNC in understanding the Popular Front, the rise of the CIO, and militant civil rights activism of the 1930s and 1940s.” — Labor: Studies in Working-Class of the Americas
“[Gellman’s] writing style is clear as he sets out for the reader exactly what he intends to accomplish in every chapter. . . . Packed with gems.” — North Carolina Historical Review
“A wonderful book, full of social history that has remained little examined through nearly all the fine (and sometimes mediocre) scholarship on African American life published in the last thirty years. It may also represent a new phase of serious scholarship in the twentieth-century American history at large.” — Journal of Illinois History
“A must read. . . . A good example of how competent research and nuanced argumentation can yield scholarly discoveries even in exhaustively studied areas of American history.” — American Historical Review
“Gellman’s analysis of their successes and failures brings new and more complex dimensions to our understanding. . . . Essential reading for anyone interested in African American, labour, gender, civil rights, and social history.” — Labour
“Gellman has dug deeply into the archives to narrate the compelling and much overlooked history of black Americans who waged war for a decade against the American system of racism. . . with a refreshing and believable honesty.” — Patterns of Prejudice
“Provides a valuable addition to studies on interracial activism, labor-civil rights unionism, and black radicalism.” — History: Reviews of New Books
“Death Blow to Jim Crow is a valuable contribution to the historiography of African American politics and the civil rights movement.” — Journal of Southern History
“Gellman’s work has returned the [National Negro Congress] to its proper place within our understanding of the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement.’” — The Historian
