Weiss, Elaine
Spell freedom : the underground schools that built the civil rights movement Underground schools that built the civil rights movement Elaine Weiss - First One Signal Publishers/Atria Books hardcover edition. - New York One Signal Publishers/Atria 2025 - vi, 377 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-367) and index.
Monteagle mountain -- Henrietta street -- Esau's bus -- The judge -- Red Roadshow and Black Monday -- Radical hillbilly -- Prepare -- Deliberate speed -- The women from Montgomery -- We shall -- Rosa's bus -- Been in the storm -- Champions of democracy -- The grocery store -- Pencils -- Anniversary -- Communist training school -- A dangerous place -- Our America -- We are not afraid -- Padlock -- Sit the welcome table -- Wade in the water -- Tent city -- Literacy to liberation -- Freedom rides -- Born again -- Ready from within -- Tremor in the iceberg -- Project C -- A living petition -- Practicing democracy -- Lay our bodies on the line -- Ain't nobody gonna turn us 'round -- Signatures -- Eyes on the prize, hold on -- Sister help to trim the sail -- Going home -- Good chaos.
"In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights--and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists--many of them women--trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, 'Mother of the Movement.' In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove, Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present."--
9781668002698 1668002698
African Americans--Education--History--Southern States--20th century.
African Americans--Suffrage--History--Southern States--20th century.
Literacy tests (Election law)--History--Southern States--20th century.
Civil rights movements--History--United States--20th century.
History--United States--20th Century
Political Science--Civil Rights
Social Science--Race & Ethnic Relations
JK1929.A2 / W52 2025
324.6208996073075 Wei 9
Spell freedom : the underground schools that built the civil rights movement Underground schools that built the civil rights movement Elaine Weiss - First One Signal Publishers/Atria Books hardcover edition. - New York One Signal Publishers/Atria 2025 - vi, 377 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-367) and index.
Monteagle mountain -- Henrietta street -- Esau's bus -- The judge -- Red Roadshow and Black Monday -- Radical hillbilly -- Prepare -- Deliberate speed -- The women from Montgomery -- We shall -- Rosa's bus -- Been in the storm -- Champions of democracy -- The grocery store -- Pencils -- Anniversary -- Communist training school -- A dangerous place -- Our America -- We are not afraid -- Padlock -- Sit the welcome table -- Wade in the water -- Tent city -- Literacy to liberation -- Freedom rides -- Born again -- Ready from within -- Tremor in the iceberg -- Project C -- A living petition -- Practicing democracy -- Lay our bodies on the line -- Ain't nobody gonna turn us 'round -- Signatures -- Eyes on the prize, hold on -- Sister help to trim the sail -- Going home -- Good chaos.
"In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights--and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists--many of them women--trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, 'Mother of the Movement.' In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove, Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present."--
9781668002698 1668002698
African Americans--Education--History--Southern States--20th century.
African Americans--Suffrage--History--Southern States--20th century.
Literacy tests (Election law)--History--Southern States--20th century.
Civil rights movements--History--United States--20th century.
History--United States--20th Century
Political Science--Civil Rights
Social Science--Race & Ethnic Relations
JK1929.A2 / W52 2025
324.6208996073075 Wei 9