Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950

The story of the civil rights movement is well-known, popularized by both the media and the academy.

Yet the version of the story recounted time and again by both history books and PBS documentaries is a simplified one, reduced to an inspirational but ultimately facile narrative framed around Dr.

King, the Kennedys, and the redemptive days of Montgomery and Memphis, in which black individuals become the rescued survivors.