M. J. O'Brien. We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth's Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired. James P. Marshall. Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960–1965.

Abstract

With these two books, M. J. O'Brien and James P. Marshall cover well-trodden paths in Mississippi history. Their timelines fall within the traditional boundaries of Mississippi's mass movement—the 1960s, a time when interracial direct action campaigns dominated much of the protest reporting and where most of the protest scholarship pools. O'Brien focuses on 1963 as pivotal in Jackson's movement, which ended in the summer of 1964; for Marshall, 1964 marks the movement's fulcrum. However, there is always room for more accounts given the nature of mass movements simultaneously orchestrated on multiple levels, each with its own nuances and cast of characters. Each book illustrates the cacophony of stories, voices, opinions, conflicts, political scuffles, and sacrifices that constitute a mass of movements with many routes to vaguely defined (and not always agreed-upon) goals. Julian Bond—one of the most recognizable of the movement veterans, having successfully transitioned from a leadership role in...