A More Beautiful and Terrible History

Examines the uses and misuses of civil rights history in the present. 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 national fable has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, diminished i [...]
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Examines the uses and misuses of civil rights history in the present. 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 national fable has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, diminished its scope, obscured the work it took and the diversity of people who lead it, papered over the forces that stood in its way, and used it to chastise present-day movements. In this book, historian Jeanne Theoharis examines and challenges this national myth-making, taking on many of the accepted stories of the movement to show them in a much different light. Theoharis challenges eight key aspects of the fable to show us the much broader vision the movement had, the work it took, the diversity of people who lead it the North and South, and the immense and persistent barriers and repression the activists faced.