My Soul Is Rested

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“A superb oral history.” —The Washington Post Book World

“So touching, so exhilarating…no book for a long time has left me so moved or so happy.” —The New York Times Book Review

The almost unfathomable courage and the undying faith that propelled the Civil Rights Movement are brilliantly captured in these moving personal recollections. Here are the voices of leaders and followers, of ordinary people who became extraordinary in the face of turmoil and violence. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956 to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, these are the people who fought the epic battle: Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others, both black and white, who participated in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter drives, and campaigns for school and university integration.

Here, too, are voices from the “Down-Home Resistance” that supported George Wallace, Bull Connor, and the “traditions” of the Old South—voices that conjure up the frightening terrain on which the battle was fought. My Soul Is Rested is a powerful document of social and political history, as well as a magnificent tribute to those who made history happen.Acknowledgments
A Chronology of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South, 1955-68
Introduction
Prelude: James Farmer
Book One: I. The Beginning
Montgomery, 1955
E.D. Nixon
Rosa L. Parks
E.D. Nixon
Bayard Rustin
Yancey Martin
T.M. Alexander, Sr.
Joseph E. Lowery
Interlude: John Lewis
II. Black Surprise
The Student Sit-Ins and the Birth of SNCC
Franklin McCain
Julian Bond and Lonnie King
John Calhoun
John Lewis
Julian Bond
Connie Curry
III: Freedom Riders
James Farmer
Hank Thomas
JOhn Lewis
James Farmer
Interlude: Ruby Hurley
IV: Alabama
The Battleground State
Part One: Birmingham
Ed Gardner
Andrew Marrisett
Abraham Wood
Fred L. Shuttlesworth
Sid Smyer
Ben Allen and Glenn V. Evans
Chuck Morgan
Chris McNair

Part Two: Selma
Albert Turner
Willie Bolden
Albert Turner
Wilson Baker
Sheyann Webb
John Lewis
Willie Bolden
Sheyann Webb
John Lewis
Julian Bond
Wilson Baker
Memories of the March
Joseph E. Lowery
Andrew Durgan
Interlude: Timothy Jenkins and Lonnie King
V. Mississippi
SNCC and the Home-Grown Heroes
Amzie Moore
Lawrence Guyot
Charles Cobb
Fannie Lou Hamer
Ivanhoe Donaldson
Hartman Turnbow
Julian Bond
Lawrence Guyot
Ruby Hurley
Dave Dennis
Mary Dora Jones
Harry Bowie
Marion Barry
Lawrence Guyot
Interlude: Dick Gregory
Book Two: I: The Down-Home Resistance
Robert Patterson
John Patterson
Sol Tepper
Bobby Shelton
J.B. Stoner
II. Higher Education
Autherine Lucy Foster
Ben Allen
Vivian Malone Jones
Hamilton Holmes
III. Lawyers and Lawmen
Nicholas Katzenbach
Elbert Tuttle
Arthur Shores
Herbert Jenkins
Everette Little
Laurie Pritchett
IV. Reporters
Eugene Patterson
Richard Valeriani
Tony Hefferman
Wendell Hoffman
Claude Sitton
Neil Maxwell
Nelson Benton
William Bradford Huie
Interlude
Roy Harris and Myles Horton
V. Assorted Rebels
Nannie Washburn
Helen Bullard
Charles R. Sims
VI. Black Camelot
Andrew Young
Dorothy Cotton
Hosea Williams
Randolph Blackwell
Willie Bolden
Leon Hall
J.T. Johnson
Interlude
Benjamin Mays and Martin Luther King, Sr.
Recessional
Ralph David Abernathy
Index

“So touching, so exhilirating … no book for a long time has left me so moved or so happy.”
—Anthony Lewis, The New York Times Book Review

“Deeply affecting and searingly vivid”
—Atlanta Journal

“Remarkable … the realities of our social history are described in a kind of magnificent humaneness.”
—Chicago Tribune Book World

Before stepping down in 2003, Howell Raines was executive editor of The New York Times. He is the author of Whiskey Man, a novel, and My Soul Is Rested, an oral history of the Civil Rights movement. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1992.US

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