The Birth of a Movement - by Dick Lehr (Paperback)

About the Book

How a movie, The Birth of a Nation affected the civil rights movement.

Book Synopsis

In this gripping historical novel, Dick Lehr tells the story of one protester in particular: Monroe Trotter, a black journalist who fought passionately for months to censor the film, challenging mass media and adding fuel to the nascent civil rights movement along the way. It was a public showdown that rolled America--pitting white against black, Hollywood against Boston, free speech against civil rights--and one that confronted the conflicted political soul of a still young America on the cusp of its greatest days.

Review Quotes

"The Birth of a Nation is an important account of a volatile moment in the eternal debate over how a free country regulates unpleasant expressions of those freedoms."
--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A notable new book."--Boston Globe

"A powerful rendering of an enduring conflict."--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

"A remarkable look at the power of mass media and the nascent civil rights movement at a pivotal time in American history."
--Booklist, STARRED review

"Lehr's fascinating portrait of simmering American racial tensions moving into the early 20th century, and his spotlight on men and women who, intentionally or not, helped galvanize painful and necessary conversations about civil rights, race relations, and the power of mass media for decades to come."--Library Journal, STARRED review

"Lively and well-researched."--Wall Street Journal

"No red-blooded American of today would favor censoring works of art. But while reading Dick Lehr's fascinating new book, The Birth of a Nation, you may find yourself rooting for just that."

--Washington Post

Formerly titled The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War

About the Author

Dick Lehr, a professor of journalism at Boston University, has won numerous national and regional journalism awards. He is a former investigative reporter, legal affairs, and magazine writer for the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting. He is the author of The Fence: A Police Cover-up along Boston's Racial Divide, an Edgar Award finalist for best nonfiction, and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award winner Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal, and its sequel, Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss. He lives outside Boston with his wife and four children.