Praise for

Speak Now Against the Day
The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South

by John Egerton


"Make room on your library shelf . . . for John Egerton's magnificent Speak Now Against the Day. His book is a stunning achievement: a sprawling, engrossing, deeply moving account of those Southerners, black and white, who raised their voices to ch allenge the South's racial mores. . . . [This] is an eloquent and passionate book, and . . . one we cannot afford to forget."--Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review

"A glorious masterpiece. . . . The most capacious and revealing book about the South in the generation before the civil rights movement ever written."--Paul Gaston, author of The New South Creed

"John Egerton has brilliantly uncovered the lost chapter of the civil rights movement. . . . Speak Now Against the Day will be the standard history of the early civil rights movement against which all others will be measured."--Boston Globe

"This is history as it should be written--a powerful blend of fact and feeling, a massive and utterly convincing display of evidence interspersed with passion and sensitivity."--Bruce Clayton, author of W. J. Cash: A Life

"John Egerton's synoptic history of the American South from the New Deal to Brown v. Board is a brilliant blend of textured narrative and sharp-eyed judgment. He seems to have given vivid voice to virtually every man and woman, black and white, of low social station and high, of the region--those who resisted the coming of the New New South and those who struggled against great odds to move the region beyond its dark past into the future."--David Levering Lewis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race

"[A] superb book, measured but eloquent."--Dan T. Carter, Washington Post Book World

"Here at last is the story of the South's visionaries, its prophets, its unsung heroes--the men and women, black and white, who tried to tell us, long before Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregation was a cancer on the American soul. . . . Th is is a book the South and the nation have been waiting for, have sorely needed, for the past half-century."--Vernon Jordan

"If historians (or readers) have forgotten or ignored the efforts to change race relations before the activities of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this book goes far in recovering the era from 1932 to 1954."--Choice

"Clear and compelling. . . . Made strong by the author's belief in equality and his love of the South."--Pat Watters, The Nation

"A rich historical narrative of black and white Southerners opposing white supremacy during the 1930s and 1940s. Egerton superbly weaves descriptions of social and intellectual ferment, politics, and culture . . . into a coherent analysis. He explains why the South failed to dismantle white supremacy when the possibility existed for voluntary, peaceful social reform."--Library Journal

"John Egerton has vividly recreated the landscapes and characters of American race relations at mid-century: the red dog Democrats and the "No not one" segregationists, the Radical Agrarians and the hometown newspaper editors, the lynching victims and the sociologists in straw hats, the Southern authors and the rabble-rousing litigators. It is a vast and vivid panorama, with the heat of Dixie summers nearly rising from the pages. This marvelous book is, at once, encyclopedic and homespun, revealing a stun ning depth and breadth of knowledge and yet told like an after-dinner tale offered by a man wearing galluses and speaking in a Southern accent."--Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock

"Rich in character and incident. . . . True to the tradition of Southerners who have sought to lead their region in the direction not of the past but of the future."--George B. Tindall, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A wonderfully readable, thoughtful, and engaging narrative that brilliantly renders the years that immediately preceded the civil rights era in the South."--Robert Coles

"A rich and inspiring story. . . . [Egerton] has uncovered a buried treasure."--Studs Terkel

"A monumental book, both in scope and style. . . An absorbing, not-to-be-missed chronicle, a history written with the heart, pace, and passion of the very best fiction."--Southern Register

"A gift to the nation [and a] . . . heartbreaking but heroic story."--Louisville Courier-Journal

"No school, library or home is complete without a copy of this important, inspiring and highly readable narrative."--Nashville Banner

"Superb. . . . [A] remarkable, monumental book."--Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"A grand achievement."--Raleigh News and Observer


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