We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired

Author: O’Brien M. J.

Brand: Brand: University Press of Mississippi

Edition: 1st

Features:

• Used Book in Good Condition

Number Of Pages: 384

Details: Product Description

Once in a great while, a photograph captures the essence of an era: Three people–one black and two white–demonstrate for equality at a lunch counter while a horde of cigarette-smoking hotshots pour catsup, sugar, and other condiments on the protesters’ heads and down their backs. The image strikes a chord for all who lived through those turbulent times of a changing America.
The photograph, which plays a central role in the book’s perspectives from frontline participants, caught a moment when the raw virulence of racism crashed against the defiance of visionaries. It now shows up regularly in books, magazines, videos, and museums that endeavor to explain America’s largely nonviolent civil rights battles of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet for all of the photograph’s celebrated qualities, the people in it and the events they inspired have only been sketched in civil rights histories. It is not well known, for instance, that it was this event that sparked to life the civil rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. Sadly, this same sit-in and the protest events it inspired led to the assassination of Medgar Evers, who was leading the charge in Jackson for the NAACP.
Winner of the 2014 Lillian Smith Book Award, We Shall Not Be Moved puts the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in into historical context. Part multifaceted biography, part well-researched history, this gripping narrative explores the hearts and minds of those participating in this harrowing sit-in experience. It was a demonstration without precedent in Mississippi–one that set the stage for much that would follow in the changing dynamics of the state’s racial politics, particularly in its capital city.

Review

“We have all seen the photograph. Three weary protesters, wearing milkshakes and mustard, sit stoically as dozens of young white men gleefully harass them at a Jackson, Mississippi, Woolworth’s lunch counter. The picture, taken by twenty-two-year-old Jackson Daily News photographer Fred Blackwell, captures the chaos of the May 1963 confrontation. . . .This extraordinary image inspired M. J. O’Brien’s meticulously researched exploration of the tumultuous period of protest that engulfed Jackson for several weeks. A corporate communications executive with a passion for research, O’Brien spent two decades tracking down and interviewing more than three dozen protesters and their antagonists, including the reclusive Anne Moody, the unrepentant segregationist D. C. Sullivan, and a transformed Fred Blackwell in one of his only interviews about the picture. . . .O’Brien’s interviews provide a richness of detail that will surprise and enlighten even those scholars intimately familiar with the Mississippi movement. . . .[S]cholars and lay readers alike will find much to learn and enjoy in this book. O’Brien’s labor of love has produced a fascinating account of this important civil rights story.”
–Chris Myers Asch, Journal of Southern History (Volume LXXX, No. 3; August 2014)

“With exhaustive research conducted over a decade, O’Brien interviewed many of the participants and utilized archival materials, films, and secondary sources. . . .Part biography, part traditional history, We Shall Not Be Moved is a welcome addition to an expanding field of local movement studies.”
–Tony Gass, The Journal of African American History

“The book . . . easily draws the reader into the emotion, tragedy, and messiness of movement activity. O’Brien neatly dissects an iconic moment encapsulated by photographer Fred Blackwell’s image of the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in on May 28, 1963, showing a mob of white youth pouring condiments and insults on the seated protesters. He then moves from the previous sit-in demonstrations in Jackson to the immediate and long-term reverberations of the three-hour ordeal the activists endured that day. O’Brien rubs off some of the movement’s gilt by narrating intra-movement struggles that thwarted cohesiveness among activists when seg

Release Date: 14-02-2013

Package Dimensions: 33x236x612