Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement

(Paperback)

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The first major history of America's oldest civil rights organisation is destined to become a classic in the field. When it was founded in 1909, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was an elite organisation of white reformers. By 1918, it had become a mass organisation with predominantly black members. Sullivan unearths the little-known early decades of NAACP's activism, telling startling stories of personal bravery, legal brilliance and political manoeuvring, before moving on to the critical post-war era.

Reviews

A major contribution to our understanding of the political and cultural history of African Americansindeed, of America itself.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

Superb new history . . . elegantly written. A compelling, exhaustively researched account that sweeps across much of the last century.
Jonathan Rosenberg, The Christian Science Monitor

[A] vital account of 100 years of foundational civil rights activism.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An overdue tribute to the organization most responsible for dismantling American apartheid.
Kirkus Reviews

A compelling story . . . includes enough action-packed material for a handful of historical novels, monographs, and biographies, as well as a few movies and a TV series or two.
American Reviews

Author Bio

Patricia Sullivan teaches history at the University of South Carolina and is a fellow in the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. Her books include Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era and Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. She lives in Washington, D.C.