Reviews
"Demonstrates how the jail, no bail tactic moved the movement from a response to a crisis to an event that drew media notice and focused the country's attention on the injustice of segregation."
--CHOICE
“An engaging introduction to the relationship between civil rights activism and arrest.”
--Journal of American History
“An important and nuanced look at a significant but little known aspect of the struggle for black equality.”
--The Journal of Southern History
“[Argues] that going to jail was an integral part of putting one’s body on the line in protests across the South….A revealing portrait of activism that almost always took place beyond the scope of the camera lens, and is all the more powerful for this unveiling.”
--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
“Does a masterful job providing insight to the role that the criminal justice system played in maintaining Jim Crow in the American South during the middle twentieth century… accurately portrays the post-World War II phase of the civil rights movement in the United States of America.”
--The Griot: Journal of African American Studies
“The first book-length treatment of the civil rights movement’s strategic repurposing of the prison.”
--Journal of American Studies
An interesting new take on the Civil Rights Movement. . . .[that] incorporates well-known stories and actors of the Civil Rights Movement with lesser-known events and people into a cohesive narrative that centers on the idea of imprisonment.
--Florida Historical Quarterly