Book cover of Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma

Book description

With this bold offering from two decades of research, J. Mills Thornton III presents the story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of community-municipal history at the grassroots level. Thornton demonstrates that the movement had powerful local sources in its three birth cities - Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma.…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Dividing Lines as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Black southern mass action against segregation commenced in Montgomery, AL with the 1955-56 bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., to national fame, then finally broke through U. S. presidential ambivalence with the 1963 protests in Birmingham that were met with heavily-photographed police violence, and culminated with the 1965 Selma marches that led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. These three Alabama cities represent the cornerstones of that dramatic 1955-1965 decade, and Thornton’s magisterial account of those movements’ local roots make it perhaps the most interpretively significant work of civil rights history ever written. A very close…

If you love Dividing Lines...

Ad

Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Want books like Dividing Lines?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Dividing Lines.

Browse books like Dividing Lines

Book cover of Simple Justice: The History of Brown V. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
Book cover of I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
Book cover of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,276

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like Dividing Lines, you might also like...

Book cover of The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More: A Great Wharf Novel

The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More by Meredith Marple,

The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.

Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…

Book cover of That First Heady Burn

That First Heady Burn by George Bixley,

Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…

5 book lists we think you will like!