Lift Every Voice

A civil rights Hall of Fame (Kirkus) that was published to remarkable praise in conjunction with the NAACPs Centennial Celebration, Lift Every Voice is a momentous history of the struggle for civil rights told through the stories of men and women who fought inescapable racial barriers in the North as well as the Southkeeping the promise of democracy alive from the earliest days of the twentieth century to the triumphs of the 1950s and 1960s.Historian Patricia Sullivan unearths the little-known early decades of the NAACPs activism, telling startling stories of personal bravery, legal brilliance, and political maneuvering by the likes of W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Walter White, Charles Houston, Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, and Roy Wilkins. In the critical post-war era, following a string of legal victories culminating in Brown v. Board, the NAACP knocked out the legal underpinnings of the segregation system and set the stage for the final assault on Jim Crow.A sweeping and dramatic story woven deep into the fabric of American historyhistory that helped shape Americas consciousness, if not its soul (Booklist) Lift Every Voice offers a timeless lesson on how people, without access to the traditional levers of power, can create change under seemingly impossible odds.