I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, with a New Preface

and#147;With this history of the civil rights movement focusing on Everyman-turned-hero, the commoner as crusader for justice, Payne challenges the old idea that history is the biography of great men.and#8221;and#151;Kirkus Reviews

and#147;Remarkably astute in its judgments and strikingly sophisticated in its analyses . . . it is one of the most significant studies of the Black freedom struggle yet published.and#8221;and#151;David J. Garrow, author of the Pulitzer Prizeand#150;winning Bearing the Cross

and#147;This extremely important book clearly reveals the logic of how ordinary people propelled the civil rights movement. . . . [It] provides a basis for optimism as we approach the next century.and#8221;and#151;Aldon Morris, author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

This momentous work offers a groundbreaking history of the early civil rights movement in the South with new material that situates the book in the context of subsequent movement literature.

Charles M. Payne is Professor and Bass Fellow, African American Studies, History and Sociology, Duke University