Summary

The history of the civil rights movement has now become a national American narrative. It is a way for the nation to feel good about its progress, exceptionalism, and democratic values while simultaneously masking current inequities. This narrative is also fixed in the past and often ignores the important connections between past and present-day politics. Author Jeanne Theoharis cautions readers against allowing this narrative to reinforce the myth of a postracial (or nearly postracial) America.

Theoharis also cautions against the iconization of figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Doing so erases other important civil rights participants and also presents an inaccurate picture of who they were and how their activism manifested itself beyond what has been remembered and memorialized in the national narrative. This inaccurate memorialization of the civil rights movement and its leaders in...