New Titles on the Civil Rights Movement

We have two titles in our Adult Non-Fiction section on landmarks of the Civil Rights Movement, both of them are Mississippi history as well.

The first is 'We Shall Not Be Moved : The Jackson Woolworth's Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired' by M. J. O'Brien with a foreword by Julian Bond.  The May 28, 1963 sit-in at the lunch counter at Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi is now recognized as one of the iconic moments of the Civil Rights Movement.  It came just after the Supreme Court passed their decision on the legality of sit-in demonstrations and two weeks before the June 12 murder of Medgar Evers.

The book offers an in depth behind the scene look at the people and situations that were behind the headlines.

'Count Them One By One : Black Mississippians Fighting For the Right to Vote' by Gordon A. Martin, Jr. covers the struggles met by volunteers, both black and white, who came together to register black citizens through Mississippi to vote despite threats of violence and even death.

The author was a young lawyer in 1962 and was sent to Mississippi as a member of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to help find witnesses willing to testify in the case United States v. Theron Lynd (Lynd would become the first southern voter registrar to be held in violation of charges of discrimination under the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1957).

 A fascinating story told in the words of a man intimately involved in that piece of history.