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More copies of this ISBNThis title in other editionseBook editionsCarry Me Home: Birmingham, alabama--the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolutionby Diane McWhorter
Awards2002 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
One of Time Magazine?s Ten Best Books of the Year A New York Times Notable Book for 2001 A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year One of The Chicago Tribune?s Best Books of the Year Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A major work of history, investigative journalism that breaks new ground, and personal memoir, Carry Me Home is a dramatic account of the civil rights era's climactic battle in Birmingham, as the movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., brought down the institutions of segregation.
"The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was one of the most cataclysmic periods in America's long civil rights struggle. That spring, King's child demonstrators faced down Commissioner Bull Connor's police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches for desegregation — a spectacle that seemed to belong more in the Old Testament than in twentieth-century America. A few months later, Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated with dynamite, bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and killing four young black girls. Yet these shocking events also brought redemption: They transformed the halting civil rights movement into a national cause and inspired the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which abolished legal segregation once and for all. Diane McWhorter, the daughter of a prominent white Birmingham family, brilliantly captures the opposing sides in this struggle for racial justice. Tracing the roots of the civil rights movement to the Old Left and its efforts to organize labor in the 1930s, Carry Me Home shows that the movement was a waning force in desperate need of a victory by the time King arrived in Birmingham. McWhorter describes the competition for primacy among the movement's leaders, especially between Fred Shuttlesworth, Birmingham's flamboyant preacher-activist, and the already world-famous King, who was ambivalent about the direct-action tactics Shuttlesworth had been practicing for years. Carry Me Home is the first major movement history to uncover the segregationist resistance. McWhorter charts the careers of the bombers back to the New Deal, when Klansmen were agents of the local iron and coal industrialists fighting organized labor. She reveals the strained and veiled collusion between Birmingham's wealthy establishment and its designated subordinates — politicians, the police, and the Klan. Carry Me Home is the product of years of research in FBI and police files and archives, and of hundreds of interviews, including conversations with Klansmen who belonged to the most violent klavern in America. John and Robert Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, Connor, King, and Shuttlesworth appear against the backdrop of the unforgettable events of the civil rights era — the brutal beating of the Freedom Riders as the police stood by; King's great testament, his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"; and Wallace's defiant "stand in the schoolhouse door." This book is a classic work about this transforming period in American history. Review:"This is a big important book, a challenging portrait of an American city at the center of the most significant domestic drama of the 20th century." Newsweek Review:"The most important book on the movement since Taylor Branch?s Parting the Waters." Jon Wiener, The Nation Review:"[A] vivid, admirably nuanced, and wide-ranging history of the city that became ground zero in the Civil Rights struggle....A dense, detailed, and insightful history." Kirkus Reviews Synopsis:"The Year of Birmingham," 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America's long civil rights struggle. That spring, child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches for desegregation. A few months later, Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, journalist and daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI documents, interviews with black activists and former Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the city, the personalities, and the events that brought about America's second emancipation. Synopsis:"The Year of Birmingham, " 1963, was one of the most cataclysmic periods in America's long civil rights struggle. Diane McWhorter, journalist and daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI documents, interviews with black activists and former Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the city, the personalities, and the events that brought about America's second emancipation. About the AuthorDiane McWhorter, who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, is a long-time contributor to The New York Times and writes for the Op-Ed page of USA Today. Her articles about race, politics, and culture have appeared in many national publications, including The Washington Post. Carry Me Home is her first book. She lives in New York City. Table of ContentsContents
Preface Introduction: September 15, 1963
Part I: Precedents, 19381959 1. The City of Perpetual Promise: 1938 2. Ring Out the Old: 1948 3. Mass Movements: 19541956 4. Rehearsal: 19561959
Part II: Movement, 19601962 5. Breaking Out 6. Action 7. Freedom Ride 8. Pivot 9. The Full Cast 10. Progress
Part III: The Year of Birmingham, 1963 11. New Day Dawns 12. Mad Dogs and Responsible Negroes 13. Baptism 14. Two Mayors and a King 15. D-Day 16. Miracle 17. Mayday 18. The Threshold 19. Edge of Heaven 20. No More Water 21. The Schoolhouse Door 22. The End of Segregation 23. The Beginning of Integration 24. All the Governor's Men 25. A Case of Dynamite 26. The Eve 27. Denise, Carole, Cynthia, and Addie 28. Aftershocks 29. BAPBOMB 30. General Lee's Namesakes Epilogue Afterword
Abbreviations Used in Source Notes Notes
Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
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