My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (Paperback)

by Howell Raines (Author) "I'm an old man now, but I'm so proud that I had a part in what happened here in Montgomery.""..." (more)
Key Phrases: outa jail, New York, Martin Luther King, Supreme Court (more...)

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 29, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140067531
• ISBN-13: 978-0140067538
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #407,649 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinary account of an extraordinary time., September 1, 2001

By	Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Howell Raines is the new executive editor for "The New York Times," but he is at heart a writer. Both strengths come to the fore in this excellent book on the American civil rights movement. As an oral history, it necessarily contains first-hand accounts of dozens and dozens of the main (and not-so-important) players in the movement. Raines does a fine and fair job of putting their stories into essentially chronological order and editing or moving bits and pieces only where necessary to ensure good flow for the reader. There were a few names I had heard of before, but many were new to me. There are surprises in this book. While we mostly associate the civil rights movement with the deep south in the mid-1960s, it actually got its start in Chicago in the 1940s when groups of people protested with the first lunch-counter sit-ins (when a manager came out to scold one of these groups with the flat, "We don't serve colored folks here," one quick-witted participant fired back, "That's OK, we don't eat 'em!"). Another revelation was the tensions between the older blacks and the younger black student generation. The older blacks, while not happy with segregation, sometimes felt that at least everyone knew where they stood with it--while the younger generation was champing at the bit to get out there and change the world overnight. Finally, it was interesting to read that many of the original founders of the movement were inspired far more by Gandhi than by Martin Luther King, Jr. A number of them express their opinion that King--while undoubtedly important and absolutely essential once the movement got underway--was not himself so convinced as to the value of a) the movement itself and b) non-violent protest--many of this friends and co-workers say here that he continued to espouse it only because eventually, he felt he had been thoroughly and unmistakeably identified with it. Although I was surprised that neither Coretta Scott King nor the Reverend Jesse Jackson were inteviewed for Mr. Raines' book, their absence is my only quibble with what is otherwise an enormously valuable and terrifically readable history.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An empowering book to read!, May 5, 2001

By	Rania Masri (Lebanon (the country)) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It was difficult to stop reading the book, once I started. This collection of interviews with the idealists, the activists, the real "fighters" in the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s -- and the people who stood against them -- is an empowering, educational read. Truly, this book is a must for those interested in learning more about the civil rights struggle (a struggle that continues until today), and about movements for peace and social justice in general.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read on the civil rights movement., September 22, 1998

By A Customer

Mr.Raines in true reporters form asks the questions that needed to be asked of those people who took part in the civil rights movement. Yet, one see that the author,a native Southern,had some feelings for those men who played the role of vilians in the South, in tha he asked them questions that no one else had never asked of them.