Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement

Sullivan spent ten years unearthing the little-known early decades of the NAACP’s activism, telling startling stories of personal bravery, legal brilliance, and political maneuvering by the likes of W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Charles Houston, Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall, and Roy Wilkins—as well as a host of unknown but pivotal figures whom Lift Every Voice brings to light for the first time. With fascinating new information on the pre–World War I decades of the NAACP, the book culminates in 1963, altering the chronology of the civil rights movement so that readers appreciate the foundation that the NAACP built in those early, formative years.