Daybreak of Freedom - by Stewart Burns (Paperback)

About the Book

The Montgomery bus boycott was a formative moment in 20th century history. In DAYBREAK OF FREEDOM, historian Stewart Burns presents a groundbreaking documentary history of the boycott. With deft narrative, Burns weaves the testimony of the participants into a riveting story that shows how events in Montgomery pushed the entire nation to keep faith with its stated principles.

Book Synopsis

The Montgomery bus boycott was a formative moment in twentieth-century history: a harbinger of the African American freedom movement, a springboard for the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., and a crucial step in the struggle to realize the American dream of liberty and equality for all. In Daybreak of Freedom, Stewart Burns presents a groundbreaking documentary history of the boycott. Using an extraordinary array of more than one hundred original documents, he crafts a compelling and comprehensive account of this celebrated year-long protest of racial segregation.

Daybreak of Freedom reverberates with the voices of those closest to the bus boycott, ranging from King and his inner circle, to Jo Ann Robinson and other women leaders who started the protest, to the maids, cooks, and other 'foot soldiers' who carried out the struggle. With a deft narrative hand and editorial touch, Burns weaves their testimony into a riveting story that shows how events in Montgomery pushed the entire nation to keep faith with its stated principles.

From the Back Cover

The Montgomery bus boycott was a formative moment in twentieth-century history: a harbinger of the African American freedom movement, a springboard for the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., and a crucial step in the struggle to realize the American dream of liberty and equality for all. In Daybreak of Freedom, Stewart Burns presents a groundbreaking documentary history of the boycott. Using an extraordinary array of more than one hundred original documents, he crafts a compelling and comprehensive account of this celebrated year-long protest of racial segregation.

Review Quotes

"Daybreak of Freedom is a valuable resource for scholars. . . . [It] is a rich documentary history of a crucial episode during the civil rights movement and the coming of age and leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr." -- Florida Historical Quarterly

"Daybreak of Freedom is an immensely valuable new resource for all students of the civil rights movement. Stewart Burns's selection of original-source documents is superb and impressive, and his beautifully written introduction and chapter commentaries are insightful and perceptive." -- David J. Garrow, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

"A skillfully edited, handsomely designed volume that will be proven useful to anyone interested in the civil rights movement." -- Journal of Southern History

"An insightful documentary history of the nation's most successful nonviolent mass protest. . . . It highlights how ordinary folk, and especially women, led, organized, and sustained the movement."Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"As one of the most important direct-action movements of twentieth-century U.S. history and one of the defining moments of the modern black freedom struggle, the Montgomery bus boycott has not received the kind of scholarly attention it plainly deserves. This work is a critical step in the right direction. Daybreak of Freedom is at once a thorough, accessible, and riveting analysis and documentary account of the movement from various points of view. The effect is to give the reader an insider's view of the movement from both the top down and the bottom up, from the leadership's inner circle, led by King, to the foot soldiers who peopled the struggle and empowered King, to the collective struggle that empowered them all." -- Waldo E. Martin Jr., University of California, Berkeley

"Provides an intimate yet thorough analysis of a moment in the Civil Rights Movement." -- West Coast Review of Books

"Scholars who are striving to broaden the context and deepen our understanding of the civil rights movement will appreciate the multiple perspectives in Daybreak of Freedom. . . . [It] is a treasure trove of possibilities for any teacher who uses primary sources, whether in a high school survey or a graduate seminar. Not only are the documents compelling and well organized, but Burns's editorial explanations are clear and helpful." -- Journal of American History

"This volume succeeds admirably in conveying the faith, fears, anxieties, and determination of the people of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and 1956." -- CHOICE

About the Author

Stewart Burns, historian and resident fellow at Stanford University and former editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers, is coeditor of Birth of a New Age, 1955-1956, volume 3 of The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., and author of Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy.