In 1959, James Lawson, a Methodist minister who spent several years in India studying the methods of Gandhi, organized a group of college students to protest segregation in Nashville through lunch counter sit-ins.. The original group of students attended various local schools including American Baptist College, Fisk University and Tennessee A & I—all primarily black colleges. Among them were the later infamous Marion Barry and John Lewis, who became a Congressman from Georgia. Several of the others became prominent in the larger civil rights movement. Many of them were interested in ministry, or came from backgrounds which gave them deep religious convictions. Halberstam tells the story of these individuals and of others who joined them along the way. He reports on and analyzes the development of the non-violent direct action movement during the early 1960s.

The largest focus is on the students' involvement in the lunch-counter sit-ins that began in early 1960 and in the Freedom Rides that began somewhat later. The students’ movement started in Nashville--which was a relatively liberal city with regard to segregation—and expanded to cities and towns of the “Deep South” in Alabama and Mississippi. There were relatively peaceful mass arrests in Nashville and vicious beatings sanctioned by the local governments in Alabama and Mississippi. Until the later 1960s, these protesters reacted non-violently, and many of them suffered serious injury.

Halberstam comments on the almost complete lack of involvement by the Kennedy administration until confronted with the extreme violence perpetrated on the protestors by law enforcement officials. He discusses the connection between some of the local police and the Ku Klux Klan. He also calls attention to the relatively new phenomenon of television broadcasting these scenes to the average American, and the significant impact on the populace and on the federal government of that visual evidence.

Halberstam was a reporter for the Nashville Tennesseean when the sit-ins started and moved to the New York Times in the early 1960s where his emphasis shifted to the Vietnam War. The writing is that of a very good reporter, but it is not a scholarly investigation and analysis. It is based upon anecdote and interviews with participants in the events and can be taken as a well written factual account. My one criticism is that he spends approximately 200 pages at the end of the book briefly recounting what happened afterward to all of the individuals he saw as key players. Since I was reading it for information about the civil rights movement, I was not so interested in the "after" stories.

I do, however, highly recommend this very readable book, particularly as one that covers the contributions of the less well known young participants in the early civil rights movement. ( )

This is a big book, but tells the story of the sit-in students at Nashville and the civil rights struggle , including the Freedom Riders, and the events at Selma in 1965. Then the book tells of the lives of the students since then. It makes for a very absorbing story, Marion Barry was a sit-in student, and his life since has been a disgrace, whereas John Lewis is a Congressman and probably the most successful of the students Halberstam chronicles. While long, this book on balance is avery satisfying account and you will be glad you read it. ( )