Speak Now Against the Day

The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South

By John Egerton

Speak Now Against the Day

768 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 102 photos

Not for Sale in British Commonwealth except Canada

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4557-8
    Published: November 1995

Chapel Hill Books

Buy this Book

To purchase online via an independent bookstore, visit Bookshop.org

Awards & distinctions

1995 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

1995 Ambassador Book Award in American Studies, English-Speaking Union of the United States

1995 Southern Book Award for Nonfiction, Southern Book Critics Circle

The compelling story of the earliest calls for desegregation and racial justice in the South.

"Make room on your library shelf . . . for John Egerton's magnificent Speak Now Against the Day. His book is a stunning achievement: a sprawling, engrossing, deeply moving account of those Southerners, black and white, who raised their voices to challenge the South's racial mores. . . . [This] is an eloquent and passionate book, and . . . one we cannot afford to forget."--Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review

"A rich and inspiring story. . . . [Egerton] has uncovered a buried treasure."--Studs Terkel

"[A] superb book, measured but eloquent."--Dan T. Carter, Washington Post Book World

About the Author

John Egerton (1935-2013), an independent nonfiction writer, wrote extensively on his native South. He is author of more than a dozen books, including The Americanization of Dixie and Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History.
For more information about John Egerton, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Make room on your library shelf . . . for John Egerton's magnificent Speak Now Against the Day. His book is a stunning achievement: a sprawling, engrossing, deeply moving account of those Southerners, black and white, who raised their voices to challenge the South's racial mores. . . . [This] is an eloquent and passionate book, and . . . one we cannot afford to forget."--Charles B. Dew, New York Times Book Review

"Rich and compelling. . . . For anyone interested in the emergence of the civil rights movement or anyone who simply loves a well-written history, Speak Now Against the Day is a must read."--Journal of Southwest Georgia History

"Here at last is the story of the South"s visionaries, its prophets, its unsung heroes--the men and women, black and white, who tried to tell us, long before Brown vs. Board of Education, that segregation was a cancer on the American soul. . . . This is a book the South and the nation have been waiting for, have sorely needed, for the past half-century."--Vernon Jordan, former president of The Urban League

"A rich and inspiring story. . . . [Egerton] has uncovered a buried treasure."--Studs Terkel

"A wonderfully readable, thoughtful, and engaging narrative that brilliantly renders the years that immediately preceded the civil rights era in the South."--Robert Coles

"[A] superb book, measured but eloquent."--Dan T. Carter, Washington Post Book World