A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History Audiobook (Free)

Praised by THE BRAND NEW York Occasions; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Journal; Slate; Publishers Regular; and more, that is “a bracing corrective to a nationwide mythology” (New York Times) throughout the civil rights motion.

The civil rights movement is becoming national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, provides shuttered the movement firmly before, whitewashed the causes that about A More Gorgeous and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Privileges Background stood in its method, and diminished its scope. And it is utilized perniciously inside our personal times to chastise present-day actions and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Gorgeous and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this nationwide myth-making, teasing aside the accepted stories showing them in a strikingly different light.

We see Rosa Parks not only being a bus female but a lifelong lawbreaker justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, as well; and Coretta Scott King not only like a “helpmate” but a lifelong financial justice and peacefulness activist who pressed her husband’s activism in these directions.

Moving from “the histories we obtain” to “the histories we are in need of,” Theoharis challenges nine key areas of the fable to show the diversity of people, especially women and teenagers, who led the movement; the task and disruption it took; the role from the media and “polite racism” in keeping injustice; and the immense obstacles and repression activists encountered. Theoharis makes us reckon with the actual fact that definately not being acceptable, unaggressive or unified, the civil privileges motion was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive eyesight of justice-which a majority of Americans compared and which the federal government feared.

By showing us the organic reality from the movement, the energy of its organizing, and the wonder and scope from the eyesight, Theoharis proves that there is nothing organic or inevitable about the improvement that occurred. A More Gorgeous and Terrible Background will change our historical framework, exposing the richness of our civil privileges legacy, the unpleasant mirror it keeps to the nation, and the key work that continues to be to be done.

Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn General public Library Literary Award in Nonfiction