A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi

On Claiborne County’s dusty fields and creaking wooden porches, Black sharecroppers, parents, and preachers joined NAACP leader Charles Evers in mid-1960s boycotts that blazed like wildfire through Mississippi’s Jim Crow order. Emilye Crosby’s A Little Taste of Freedom dives deep into this rural struggle, tracing how everyday citizens—farmhands, children in Sunday-school pews, even armed self-defenders—turned local protests into a seismic Supreme Court victory that affirmed economic boycotts as political protest. Through more than 100 oral histories and keen legal analysis, Crosby reveals how the Civil Rights Movement’s national triumphs propelled new waves of grassroots action, testing white supremacist power in church basements and courthouse squares. Each chapter crackles with Political Justice and Racial Justice as activists balanced NAACP endorsements, tense negotiations with the state’s segregationist Sovereignty Commission, and solidarity from uneasy white liberals. This long-term community study shatters assumptions that freedom ended in 1965, showing instead how durable hope and fierce determination reshaped small communities and etched a lasting blueprint for Economic Justice. Invite this vivid chorus of voices into your classroom, discussion group, or sermon—then tap the Save to List button to bookmark this title, or tap the External Link button to view purchase and rental options.