Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement

In this exhaustively researched account of the civil rights movement, history and law professor Brown-Nagin focuses on the consequential roles of “lesser-known lawyers and organizers, litigators and negotiators, elites and the grassroots.” The interests and methods of individuals and local groups, where intraracial and class-based conflicts emerge, differ from and, at times, challenge, national groups like the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund. Brown-Nagin’s work recounts the Atlanta experience from the early 1950s, as Brown v. Topeka Board of Education moves through the court and community, to the 1970s, as issues of voting rights, housing, education, transportation, and public recreational space are faced locally, where “pragmatic civil rights... privileged politics over litigation, placed a high value on economic security, and rejected the idea that integration (or even desegregation) and equality were one and the same.” Brown-Nagin’s meticulous, densely written account explores both little-known lives and less discussed litigations in a manner both accessible and scholarly. Even if there is a whiff of the dissertation, its “from the bottom” account adds depth and freshness as well as some controversy to a moment in history about which, the author makes clear, there is much more to know. (Feb.)