Janet Cheatham Bell

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE

While researching this book, I was deeply moved by the courage of countless NAACP members who have put their lives and livelihoods on the line--Walter White investigating lynchings, Septima Clark sticking to her principles and losing her career, Medgar Evers registering voters in Mississippi and losing his life....I read about Du Bois's unyielding defiance of anyone who would deny him his "full manhood rights" in an era when blacks were lynched regularly with impunity. Then there was eventual U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall tirelessly traveling the country to defend black folk in malevolent courtrooms and not being certain if he would get home alive.

I was astonished to learn that it was a woman (Mary White Ovington) who brought the passion and indignation of DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett of the all-black Niagara Movement together with the money and influence of the all-white National Negro Committee....The two groups essentially merged to form the NAACP.


FROM THE FOREWORD BY JULIAN BOND

"Despite the seriousness of the central subject, not all the material is grim--or even challenging. Much of it is inspirational--these words come, after all, from a story of the steady triumph of right over wrong. Some of these are angry words--but anger is a proper emotion to bring to this fight. Some of the words are humorous--laughter is a frequently employed weapon than can win, and wound. And some are musical, lyrical--prose poetry from singers without any instrument except their voices or pens, and their minds."