This was a thoughtful, comprehensive view of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, beginning with the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling banning segregated schools, to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s a different look at the civil rights movement from what we’re used to. We’re familiar with MLK, Rosa Parks, John Lewis and LBJ. But few of us are familiar with the people that carried out the groundwork of the movement.

This book describes an initiative to train activists and to provide literacy and civics education to disenfranchised black people of the American South. In the summer of 1954, Esau Jenkins and Septima Clark travelled to Tennessee’s Highlander Center, a rural interracial training school for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white educator with roots in the labor movement. They began working together to help black southerners pass the literacy tests required to vote in the era of Jim Crow, launching the Citizenship Schools project. This effort grew into a network of nine hundred schools, not only preparing thousands of Black citizens to vote, but creating a generation of activists trained in citizenship, organizing and political advocacy. Led by Clark, this effort brought literacy to adults, while also giving them an understanding of their history and rights. For Clark, voting was a way of giving someone self-respect. This work inspired Rosa Parks, who would go on to advance the movement.

If you like to read nonfiction about people you haven’t heard of, but should have, this one will fit the bill. It’s primarily about how four people worked with civil rights organizations and leaders to bring education and voting rights to the people. This book would be a perfect companion to Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King, or the graphic memoirs of John Lewis. I’d also recommend it to fans of Isabel Wilkerson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Bryan Stevenson.

Septima Clark was particularly inspiring to me. She spent her entire life teaching, and she saw that adults needed to be taught literacy in ways that were practical and not demeaning. One of her first acts of resistance was refusing to cancel her NAACP membership when her school district demanded it. She turned that resistance, for which she was fired, into a lifetime of pushing back against what she was told to do. By the end of her life she became a school board member for the school district that fired her, and received an honorary doctorate from the College of Charleston. She was honored by President Carter and has a school in DC named for her.

This book also reminds us that court cases and laws only mean something if they are enforced. Even when the Voting Rights Act got rid of racist literacy tests and fees, people were terrorized to keep them from voting. And while fair voting practices should lead to diverse representation, resulting in the rights of all people being respected, we have a very long way to go.

This won’t be for anyone with a casual interest in the civil rights movement. It’s a detailed look at the very small things that make up a movement, the day to day work and sacrifices. It’s a look at the highs and lows; the violence and the successes. No movement is perfect, and this one wasn’t either, particularly in its treatment of the women who did much of the work. Still, it shows how the work of many is needed behind the scenes to make real progress happen.

This book took me a long time to read, because there’s a lot to it and it’s a heavy subject.  It can be dry at times, despite its compelling subject. But it’s well-researched and added so much to what I knew of the civil rights movement, I think it’s a book everyone should read. Note: I received an advance review copy from NetGalley and publisher Atria Books. This book was published March 4, 2025.