A history of the early civil rights movement in the South. Includes interviews with movement participants.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission compiled secret files on more than 87,000 private citizens in the most extensive state spying program in U.S. history. Its mission: to save segregation.

Using in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson brilliantly captures the tottering legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi, while vividly portraying: the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pete Seeger to the state, the courageous black citizens and Northern volunteers who refused to be intimidated in their struggle for justice, and the white Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life....

This book includes the mug shots of all 329 Freedom Riders arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, along with contemporary portraits of 99 Riders, supplemented by interviews and brief bios. In the spring and summer of 1961, several hundred Americans--black and white, male and female--entered Southern bus and train stations to challenge the segregated waiting rooms, lunch counters, and bathrooms. The Supreme Court had ruled that such segregation was illegal,...