In Memphis, Confederate statues and cotton festivals built the notion of a “Lost Cause,” a myth of the South that cast the Civil War as a glorious, holy, doomed crusade. In A Fight for Visibility, historian Donna Reeves details how Black Memphians challenged these public spaces and rituals, establishing their own vision of the past.
In Moving Toward Freedom, Susan O’Donovan invites a more complex understanding of how enslaved Black people defined their freedom, based on their surprisingly mobile lives. O’Donovan will be in conversation with Charles McKinney at Novel in Memphis on August 25.
In The Memphis Showboats, Keith Wood explains the glorious and depressing history of a franchise in the short-lived United States Football League. Along the way, he reveals the struggle in Memphis to achieve national respect.
FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: In Dynamite Nashville, Betsy Phillips plunges into the world of white supremacist violence in Nashville during the civil rights era.
In collaboration with Emily Yellin, the Rev. James Lawson penned Nonviolent, a memoir explaining the principles, personalities, and struggles of a movement for social change. Yellin will speak at the Historic Woolworth Theatre in Nashville on February 18, the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on February 20, and Novel in Memphis on March 26.
In Medgar and Myrlie, the noted television commentator Joy-Ann Reid pens an intimate history of a marriage and a panoramic narrative of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi and beyond. Reid will speak at the University Center at the University of Memphis on February 7.
