My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South

I have taken several African-American college courses throughout years. However, this is the first book that really gave a whole new perspective from the people on the frontlines fighting during The Civil Rights Movement. I recall after reading the book that many blacks saw the movement as a "spiritual movement," and fought with a weapon called the soul force. "My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered," is an excellent book and I would recommend others buy it. It will not be a waste of money.

This is one of the finest oral histories that I've ever read. Based on interviews with more than 100 people over the decade of the 1960's when Raines was a newspaper reporter in the field covering the civil rights movement in the South.Excellent interviews in peoples' own words. The interviews are not with the national leaders or the people who are always quoted. Rather, they are with the relatively unknown people who made up the grassroots of the civil rights movement, as well as with their opponents.This book is superbly edited by Raines to tell a thousand stories in a compelling and unique way.Highly Recommended.

This is a collection of accounts on the Civil Rights Movement. Told by the leaders, participants and witnesses, Howell Raines's work provides a rare insight to the dynamics and complexities of the political events in late fifties and early sixties. Good for those interested in the black struggle for equality and citizenship in the past century. Some parts are a bit repetitive and verbose.

Howell Raines is the new executive editor for "The New York Times," but he is at heart a writer. Both strengths come to the fore in this excellent book on the American civil rights movement. As an oral history, it necessarily contains first-hand accounts of dozens and dozens of the main (and not-so-important) players in the movement. Raines does a fine and fair job of putting their stories into essentially chronological order and editing or moving bits and pieces only where necessary to ensure good flow for the reader. There were a few names I had heard of before, but many were new to me. There are surprises in this book. While we mostly associate the civil rights movement with the deep south in the mid-1960s, it actually got its start in Chicago in the 1940s when groups of people protested with the first lunch-counter sit-ins (when a manager came out to scold one of these groups with the flat, "We don't serve colored folks here," one quick-witted participant fired back, "That's OK, we don't eat 'em!"). Another revelation was the tensions between the older blacks and the younger black student generation. The older blacks, while not happy with segregation, sometimes felt that at least everyone knew where they stood with it--while the younger generation was champing at the bit to get out there and change the world overnight. Finally, it was interesting to read that many of the original founders of the movement were inspired far more by Gandhi than by Martin Luther King, Jr. A number of them express their opinion that King--while undoubtedly important and absolutely essential once the movement got underway--was not himself so convinced as to the value of a) the movement itself and b) non-violent protest--many of this friends and co-workers say here that he continued to espouse it only because eventually, he felt he had been thoroughly and unmistakeably identified with it. Although I was surprised that neither Coretta Scott King nor the Reverend Jesse Jackson were inteviewed for Mr. Raines' book, their absence is my only quibble with what is otherwise an enormously valuable and terrifically readable history.

This book is amazing. The author did a great job interviewing different people to express their experience and view points from the Civil Right Movement. Definitely give the reader a well rounded perspective. Much respect to all the sung and unsung hero’s of the Civil Rights Movement!

I loved the choice of using the form of oral history. We all know the high points of the Civil Rights Movement, but what this book illuminates is who and what created the movements that we all know. There are many stories that were never publicized but highly important to understand the full extent of the movement and how the monumental events came to fruition.

We just returned from a trip through Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, Jackson and Memphis. This book, which includes interviews with people involved in the Civil Rights struggle, added tremendous new insights into every place we visited.

Read this book in college ten years ago. Lost it and been searching for it since. Chronicles one of the last real and most important revolutionary times in America. Highly recommend. It's detailed and amazing. So glad to have it back in my collection.

This is an unusual book due to its format. It tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement in the `Deep South' from 1955 up until Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.The historical events are told in some 470 pages. They include:The Montgomery bus boycott, The Student sits ins, The `Freedom' rides, The Birmingham Demo's, The Freedom Summer & The Selma March.The book contains some 100 interviews with a whole host of players, from both sides, who were present at the main events in the South. Most are less than a half dozen pages; some are no more than a couple of pages but all are extremely interesting and brilliant at picture building for the reader. Their own recollections are just fascinating and of course eye-opening in many instances. This is a very interesting way to educate one's self on a topic, although none of the main events are told in full from start to finish - these are extracts but the untold truths are there for the reader to surmise and dwell on - and this read will give you plenty to dwell on!Two things strike you immediately whilst taking in the views of the people who were there in the South at that time.Firstly, those who participated in the movement were undeniably very brave and selfless people. Some of their fellow colleagues were murdered, beaten or treated despicably, all lived on a knife edge but were very determined and forever hopeful. Thankfully they were the forerunners in seeing off the `Jim Crow' segregation and at least some of the rampant racism in the South. Many though, as stated, paid a very high price for it.Secondly, the book reeks of the absolute hatred of the `Southern whites' against the blacks. That hatred was ingrained to such a degree that the lines of power and law and order were also anti- black in every which way. That same hatred was ingrained in Mayors, Governors, Judges, the police and other enforcement officers, the FBI and of course the KKK, in fact even the average red neck was free to murder on several occasions as this read documents.This was an unspeakably horrific time for the black African Americans, one which will shame white Americans for ever in the then lawless South - certainly as far as the black communities were concerned. Brutality without fear of conviction was the order of the day for the rednecks?Most readers will be appalled and yet moved by this read. If there is one story you should read which typifies the South at that time it is the tragic tale of Emmett Till - just research it, you'll understand where I'm coming from.