From journalist Paul Kix, the gripping, never-before-told story of the 1963 Birmingham campaign, ten weeks that would shape the course of the civil rights movement and America's future.
This is one of the iconic photos in American history: a black teenager, a police officer and his hustling German shepherd. Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963. In May 2020, when journalist Paul Kix saw another photo – that of a Minneapolis police officer choking George Floyd – he repeatedly returned to the photo another taken half a century earlier, haunted by its echoes. . What is the full legacy of the Birmingham photo, Kix wondered?And the campaign from which it arose?
In You Must Be Ready to Die Before You Can Begin to Live, Paul Kix takes readers behind the scenes as he tells the story of the pivotal 10-week campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. At the same time, it also opens a window into the minds of the four extraordinary men who led the campaign: Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel. With page-turning prose that resembles a thriller,
Kix's book is the first to focus on the ten weeks of Project C, as its name suggests, its specific history, and its resonances. now resonates throughout our entire culture.Of course this is where it all began, but it is also the key to understanding where we are and where we are going. As the fight for equality continues on many fronts, Project C is vital to our understanding of our times and the impact that strategic action can have.
