A review by gdonahue
A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis

4.0

This is a solidly written and argued exploration of civil rights history in the U.S. and the actuality of that history versus the way that history is presently taught and memorialized. Theoharis’s thesis is that civil rights history has been flattened and simplified in a way to support the inevitability of the “American experiment” and the manifest destiny of our development towards an ever more just society. By retelling and co-opting a successful and inspiring recent protest movement, we fail to actually reckon with the ways our country truly hasn’t progressed or changed in meaningful ways. When you hear people argue that BLM and other movements of today should be more like MLK, point them towards this book! Or, better yet, read this book yourself so you have examples from recent history to disprove their arguments.