BPL Book Prize Book Club: A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
In honor of the 10-year anniversary of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, we are celebrating all year-long with book clubs featuring past winners. This meeting, we will be discussing 2018 nonfiction winner A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis.
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.
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.
2018 BPL Book Prize Winner: Nonfiction
You can place your copy on hold here. We look forward to discussing with you!
