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New from author Elaine Weiss
Spell Freedom:
The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement
Thrilled to announce the forthcoming publication of my new book – Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement (One Signal/Atria/Simon & Schuster) on March 4, 2025 – continuing my exploration of untold stories in American history. In this book I take readers deep into the mid 20th Century civil rights movement, offering a new perspective on events – from the grassroots up – and introducing a new cadre of American heroines and heroes, Black and white, whose names may not be familiar, but whose courage changed our nation.
Spell Freedom is a powerful, intimate, and enlightening book that tells the remarkable story of how a group of educators and their allies worked together to advance Black citizenship rights in the Jim Crow South. While mainstream narratives on the civil rights movement tend to focus on well-known and visible leaders, this book sheds new light on some of the ordinary people behind the scenes who led quietly – and effectively – with great courage and deep conviction in the face of adversity. This beautifully written book is a must read for anyone interested in race, history, politics and education.
– Keisha N. Blain, co-editor of the #1 New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls
They were an unlikely team of disruptors: Septima Clark, a grandmotherly Black South Carolina school teacher; Esau Jenkins, a striving Sea Island businessman; Bernice Robinson, a vivacious Charleston beautician; and Myles Horton, a white Tennessean who called himself a “radical hillbilly.” In the summer of 1954 they met at the Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Horton, and united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the literacy test that was a prerequisite to registering to vote – and designed to disenfranchise them.
Working together, Clark – whom Dr. King would later call “Mother of the Movement” – Jenkins, Robinson and Horton created the Citizenship Schools project, starting with a single secret classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, over 900 citizenship schools had been established in eleven southern states, quietly preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights – and vote. The program empowered Black southerners, making them “ready from within” for the struggle ahead, while nurturing a generation of local leaders – a majority of them women – who went on to become the organizational backbone of the Civil Rights Movement.
Spell Freedom plunges readers into the heart of the burgeoning movement, offering a visceral and intimate story of ordinary citizens confronting injustice with courage and creativity, attempting to repair American democracy with their own hands.
Elaine Weiss in the News
A collection of essays, interviews, reviews and speaking engagements.
New York Times Suffrage Centennial Special section, Advisory Board
Suffrage Isn’t ‘Boring History.’ It’s a Story of Political Geniuses. And by the way, it’s “suffragist” not “suffragette.” Read online at nytimes.com
Panel Discussion of “The Trial of Susan B. Anthony” Opera by Steven Mark Kohn
ADA Artist Management October 26, 2020 | 01:20:20 Hosted by Lawrence Brownlee, this talk back will feature the artists, composer, and special guests Elaine Weiss, Sharon I. Nelson, and Deborah Hughes. Topics of discussion will be the inspiration for The Trial of Susan...
Elaine was the Opening Speaker for the Chautauqua Institution’s Suffrage Centennial Week
The Chautauquan Daily ‘Woman’s Hour’ author Elaine Weiss opens Chautauqua week dedicated to suffrage centennial July 27, 2020 In many ways, it makes sense that Elaine Weiss is opening Week Five of the CHQ Assembly season, dedicated to celebrating the centennial of...
The Final Desperate Battle for Suffrage in Tennessee
Photo of Carrie Chapman Catt speaking on an old fashioned candlestick phone. LOC Carrie Chapman Catt. Collections of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/94506343/) NATIONAL PARK SERVICE ARTICLE The Final Desperate Battle for Suffrage in Tennessee...
C-SPAN American History Q&A Program on Ratification of 19th Amendment
C-SPAN AMERICAN HISTORY Q&A August 11, 2020 | 01:00 Elaine WeissJournalist and author Elaine Weiss discussed her book, The Woman’s Hour, about the lead-up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920, that guaranteed women...
The 1600 Sessions: Women’s Suffrage and the White House
The 1600 Sessions Presented by the White House Historical Association Women’s Suffrage and the White House July 23, 2020 | 01:01 | 44 This year marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment, the culmination of the suffragists’ fight to secure the right to vote for women....
”History with Howard Rubenstein” PBS/New York Historical Society Series
”History with Howard Rubenstein” PBS/New York Historical Society Series The Elaine Weiss interview will appear in print form in Rubenstein’s forthcoming book, The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream in Fall 2021. * * * About The Book American icons and...
She Votes! Podcast Elaine Weiss Interview
She Votes! Podcast: Mother Knows Best August 26th, 2020 | 36:52 | S1:E7 EPISODE SUMMARY August 18, 1920. Nashville, Tennessee. Men and women on both sides of the suffrage fight have been battling for weeks over the final state needed to ratify the 19th amendment,...
Christian Science Monitor Centennial Special Coverage – 19th Amendment: The six-week ‘brawl’ that won women the vote
Women march for the right to vote in Nashville. Tennessee was the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment, passing it narrowly on August 18, 1920. Tennessee State Library & Archives 19th Amendment: The six-week 'brawl' that won women the vote by Elaine Weiss,...