A more beautiful and terrible history: the uses and misuses of civil rights history

Description

Explodes the fables that have been created about the civil rights movementThe civil rights movement has become legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump as proof of the power of American democracy. This national fable of dreamy heroes and accidental heroines has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, stripped activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks of their substance, obscured the work it took and the diversity of people who led it, papered over the forces that stood in its way in the North as well as the South, and been used to chastise present-day movements. In this book, historian Jeanne Theoharis reveals this national mythmaking, taking on many of the accepted stories of the movement to show them in a much different light. Theoharis examines and challenges nine key aspects of the fable to show us the diversity of people who led it in the North and South, the broader vision the movement had, the work and disruption it took, the...