"With this history of the civil rights movement focusing on Everyman-turned-hero, the commoner as crusader for justice, Payne challenges the old idea that history is the biography of great men."--Kirkus Reviews
"Remarkably astute in its judgments and strikingly sophisticated in its analyses . . . it is one of the most significant studies of the Black freedom struggle yet published."--David J. Garrow, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Bearing the Cross"
"This extremely important book clearly reveals the logic of how ordinary people propelled the civil rights movement. . . . [It] provides a basis for optimism as we approach the next century."--Aldon Morris, author of "The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement"