A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York and the author or co-author of seven books and numerous articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements, the politics of race and education, social welfare and civil rights in post-9/11 America.

PREFACE
A Dream Diluted and Distorted

THE HISTORIES WE GET

INTRODUCTION
The Political Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History and Memorialization in the Present

THE HISTORIES WE NEED

CHAPTER ONE
The Long Movement Outside the South: Fighting for School Desegregation in the “Liberal” North

CHAPTER TWO
Revisiting the Uprisings of the 1960s and the Long History of Injustice and Struggle That Preceded Them

CHAPTER THREE
Beyond the Redneck: Polite Racism and the “White Moderate”

CHAPTER FOUR
The Media Was Often an Obstacle to the Struggle for Racial Justice

CHAPTER FIVE
Beyond a Bus Seat: The Movement Pressed for Desegregation, Criminal Justice, Economic Justice, and Global Justice

CHAPTER SIX
The Great Man View of History, Part I: Where Are the Young People?

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Great Man View of History, Part II: Where Are the Women?

CHAPTER EIGHT
Extremists, Troublemakers, and National Security Threats: The Public Demonization of Rebels, the Toll It Took, and Government Repression of the Movement

CHAPTER NINE
Learning to Play on Locked Pianos: The Movement Was Persevering, Organized, Disruptive, and Disparaged, and Other Lessons from the Montgomery Bus Boycott

AFTERWORD
A History for a Better World

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index