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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.
99 Years After Women’s Suffrage, the Fight for the Vote Continues
BY ELAINE WEISS AUGUST 26, 2019 The observance of Women’s Equality Day on Monday marks the 99th anniversary of the day the 19th Amendment, extending the vote to women, entered the Constitution in 1920. These days, as the centennial year gets underway, I keep a Votes...
The Imperfect, Unfinished Work of Women’s Suffrage
A century after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, it’s worth remembering why suffragists had to fight so hard, and who was fighting against them. By Casey Cep, July 1, 2019 The crime was striking a match. Never mind that the match broke before it caught, or...
“The Woman’s Hour” Wins ABA 2019 Silver Gavel Award
The Woman’s Hour has won the American Bar Association’s highest honor, The Silver Gavel Award for a book furthering the American public’s understanding of law. The award ceremony will be held this summer at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Elaine was invited...
PBS To The Contrary
PBS's To The Contrary program featured a segment on TWH and an interview with Elaine. Watch the episode…
WBUR’s Radio Boston Interview with Elaine Weiss
Looking Back On The Fight For Women's Suffrage A Century Later by Chris Citorik and Walter Wuthmann With a record number of women in Congress, and a record number of women running for president, many are calling this a new era for women in politics. But it wasn't all...
A copy of TWH was delivered to every woman serving in Congress on Capitol Hill
TWH on the Longlist for the Chautaqua Prize
TWH Named a Finalist for American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award
New York Times Review of The Woman’s Hour
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rave Review in NYT Book Review: “In The Woman’s Hour, the Battle Over the 19th Amendment Comes Alive” “The deliciousness of the details in Elaine Weiss’ new book suggests that certain historical figures warrant entire novels of their own.” Read the...