“A bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) that has been created about the civil rights movement
The civil rights movement has become 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, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice.
In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions.
Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared.
By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done.
Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction
“A bracing corrective to a national mythology that renders figures like King ‘meek and dreamy, not angry, intrepid and relentless’…It’s clarifying to read a history that shows us how little we remember, and how much more there is to understand.”
—New York Times
“Theoharis’s lucid and insightful study. . .proffer[s] a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the civil rights movement’s legacy, and showing how much remains to be done.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“An important illustration of the ways that history is used, or misused, in modern social and political life. Required reading for anyone hoping to understand more about race relations and racism in the United States and highly recommended for all readers interested in 20th-century American history.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review
“A hard-hitting revisionist history of civil rights activism. . . . An impassioned call for continued efforts for change.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Theoharis’s view of history is expansive, including women and young people without whom the movement would have been impossible, detailing forgotten stories of activists’ fights to gain a foothold in the ostensibly less racist North, and criticizing politicians (including Barack Obama) for oversimplifying complex figures. To call this slim volume a compelling attempt to reconcile fact and fable is to underestimate its ambition; what Theoharis desires is nothing less than to show us ‘who we are and how we got here.’”
—O Magazine
“Jeanne Theoharis is one of our nation’s finest civil rights scholars. She brings an incisive, urgent and unique critical perspective to our understanding of an era that is increasingly distorted and misunderstood. A More Beautiful and Terrible History is an important book that sheds new light on our recent past and yields a fresh understanding of our tumultuous present.”
—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“A More Beautiful and Terrible History paints a vivid picture of the intentional and deadly omissions within popular histories of the 1950s and 1960s, cutting a path through hardened ground to give us the tools for a caring and inclusive future.”
—Ericka Huggins, equity and inclusion educator and former member of the Black Panther Party
“Only truth sets us free. In this moment when we need fresh resistance movements, it is critical that we know the true history of the Black freedom struggle. Jeanne Theoharis debunks fables of the resistance to prove that the movements were not just spontaneous and did not immediately produce results; that young people and women were crucial to the leadership and drive; that polite racists impeded progress, not just virulent ones; and that those who became known as the leaders always understood that they were servants of the movement. The gift of this book is that Theoharis is a historical truth teller. A More Beautiful and Terrible History is crucial, and we must apply this wisdom—for today and always—to resist injustice in the face of racism, classism, and militarism.”
—The Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II
“In A More Beautiful and Terrible History, Jeanne Theoharis debunks nearly a dozen national fables of polite civil rights workers humbly petitioning the nation to become a ‘more perfect union.’ The propaganda of America’s exceptionalist history, she demonstrates, not only distorts the truth of the nation’s deep and recurring commitment to systemic racism. These ‘mis-histories’ of the civil rights movement discredit the actual and necessary work of antiracist activists today, whose youthful courage and creativity are the real legacy of the past.”
—Khalil Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban 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
- “What your history class didn’t teach you about the civil rights movement,” Under the Radar with Callie Crossley/WGBH, interview
- “A Reading List for Ralph Northam,” The Atlantic, included in reading roundup
- “What King Said About Northern Liberalism,” The New York Times, op-ed
- “The Best Black History Books of 2018,” Black Perspectives, named a “Best Black History Book of 2018”
- “‘A More Beautiful and Terrible History’ Corrects the Fables Told of the Civil Rights Movement,” Los Angeles Review of Books, Q&A
- “Coretta Scott King and the Civil-Rights Movement’s Hidden Women,” The Atlantic, piece from special King issue
- “Seeing Martin Luther King Jr. in a New Light,” The New York Times, author quoted and book mentioned in piece about three new MLK documentaries and links to her Times review
- “10 Historians on What People Still Don’t Know About Martin Luther King Jr.,” Time, included in MLK death 50th anniversary feature
- “We remember how Martin Luther King Jr. revolutionized the South. But we can’t forget his struggles in the North,” The Washington Post, op-ed
- “America has romanticised the civil rights movement,” The Irish Times, author quoted and book mentioned in piece
- “Martin Luther King Jr: the dream, the man, the legacy,” TimesLIVE (South Africa), author quoted and book mentioned
- “Jeanne Theoharis: The Misuses of Civil Rights History,” BYU Radio/Thinking Aloud (SiriusXM 143), radio interview
- “The world’s best human rights books: Winter 2018,” Honk Kong Free Press, included book in list of world’s best human rights books for Winter 2018
- “New York City’s Optimism and Resistance After Brown vs. Board,” WNYC Radio News, radio interview
- “The sanctification — and sanitization — of Martin Luther King Jr.” Vox, Q&A
- “What If Martin Luther King Jr. Were Never Assassinated?” National Geographic, author interviewed and book featured in piece
- “50 Years Later, the Misunderstood Legacy of MLK,” How Stuff Works, author interviewed and book covered in piece
- “Was MLK more like Black Lives Matter than we think?” NBC News/Left Field, video piece including interview with Jeanne Theoharis
- “A More Beautiful And Terrible History: The Uses And Misuses Of Civil Rights History,” Rising Up With Sonali, interview
- “Interview with Jeanne Theoharis,” Progressive Forum/KPFT, radio interview
- “A More Beautiful and Terrible History,” Torch (St John’s University), piece about Jeanne Theoharis’s appearance at the school
- “Episode 92: Jeanne Theoharis,” The Public Morality, radio interview
- “Respect power of Martin Luther King Jr. to bring discomfort, historian argues,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, feature interview hooked to 50th anniversary
- “Vann R. Newkirk II - Challenging the Easy Narrative of MLK in The Atlantic,” Comedy Central/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, cited by Vann Newkirk of The Atlantic on 3/8 episode at 7-min mark
- Education Week (online), quoted in guest blog piece, 2/26/2018
- Pacific Standard, Q&A, 2/26/2018
- Los Angeles Sentinel, interview, 2/22/2018
- Midday/WNYC (NPR New York), live interview by phone, 2/22/2018
- C-SPAN/Book TV, filming of Brooklyn Historical Society event, 2/15/2018
- Brooklyn Daily Eagle (online), included in Bookbeat section, 2/14/2018
- NBC New York, mentioned on Bill Goldstein’s book segment, 2/10/2018
- CUNY Conversation with Noted Historians, interview, 2/9/2018
- Lapham’s Quarterly, original piece, 2/8/2018
- Democracy Now!, interview, 2/6/2018
- Brooklyn College News, feature, 2/6/2018
- The Karen Hunter Show/SiriusXM Radio, live interview by phone, 2/6/2018
- The Joe Madison Show/SiriusXM Radio, live interview by phone, 2/5/2018
- WUWM Radio (Milwaukee NPR), interview, 2/5/2018
- Weekend All Things Considered/NPR, interview, 2/4/2018
- The Guardian, excerpt, 2/3/2018
- Literary Hub, excerpt, 2/2/2018
- O Magazine, review, February 2018 (print issue)
- Salon, excerpt, 1/30/2018
- Ms. (blog), excerpt, 1/30/2018
- Publishers Weekly, listed in Books of the Week reading list, 1/26/2018
- The New York Times/Daily Book Review, listed in “11 New Books We Recommend This Week” reading roundup, 1/24/2018
- Black Perspectives, write-up and short Q&A, 1/22/2018
- The Washington Times, book quoted, 1/15/2018
- Slate, feature piece about the book, 1/15/2018
- CNN (online), author and book quoted in piece, 1/15/2018
- The Seattle Times, author quoted and book mentioned in editorial piece, 1/14/2018
- Religion Dispatches, excerpt, 1/14/2018
- National Geographic (online), author quoted and book mentioned in piece, 1/14/2018
- TIME.com, op-ed, 1/12/2018
- Bitch Media, named one of “13 Books You Must Read in January”, 1/2/2017