Why read Speak Now Against the Day?

Book cover of Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South

Book description

The compelling story of the earliest calls for desegregation and racial justice in the South. ""Make room on your library shelf . . . for John Egerton's magnificent Speak Now Against the Day . His book is a stunning achievement: a sprawling, engrossing, deeply moving account of those Southerners, black…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Speak Now Against the Day as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Clyde Edgerton

Author

I love this book because it shows Southerners fighting against racial segregation for decades prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. John Egerton wanted to show the civil rights movement in the south from 1932 to 1954.

He wanted to name all the people he could who participated. He thought the book would take two years to finish, but it took him six. His research pulls back a veil that covers fights against racism in the American South prior to the 1954 Supreme Court Brown Decision.

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