A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

The last body chapter follows up on several points about civil rights activism and activists. Accounts of the civil rights “naturalize” it; mythologized narratives paint civil rights as the natural momentum of American democracy instead of showing it for what it was: a radical development that required herculean human effort. Theoharis again returns to the Montgomery bus boycott to stress that “there was nothing natural or preordained about it” (188). The author frames the bulk of the chapter around 10 lessons from the boycott.

The first lesson is the “role of perseverance” in the decades before the boycott that ultimately resulted in community-wide action and increased national visibility (189). Rosa Parks was involved in that long struggle before she became the face of the boycott.

The second lesson is the transformation of anger into action. Relatedly, the third lesson is “how the sense of possibility grows by being in action” (193). Despite the challenges and ostracization that activists faced, they stayed committed to their cause and, through intensifying efforts, transformed anger into action into hope.

The fourth lesson stresses the efficacy of collective organizing. During the boycott, people came together to create a carpool system that endured for over a year while the boycott lasted. This was a largescale operation and an incredible accomplishment.

The fifth lesson is “the power of disruptiveness” (198). Though targeted for their tactics, activists forced change through continually disrupting the status quo. Not all demonstrations ended successfully, but activists made some major gains. This activity, however, required sacrifice—the sixth lesson to glean from the boycott.

The movement would not have been successful without strong mentorship and community. Those bedrocks are the seventh lesson: “[A]ctivists need other activists” (201). The importance of learning is the eighth lesson. Activists learned from each other and from their personal experiences.

The ninth lesson is that the boycotters had to strategize through mass resistance from white Montgomery. Racists went as far as bombing activists’ houses, although most white citizens opposed activism in more subtle ways like discrediting Black grievances.

The final lesson is “the value of multiple stages of resistance” (205). Activists were savvy, creative, responsive, and smart. Years of activism prepped the city to organize in such a way. As the boycott played out, some activists fought in the court system as others did the leg work of avoiding the buses. The movement ended in the desegregation of the city’s bus system.

The Afterword stresses the importance of applying the previous chapters’ historical lessons to the present-day. A fuller account of the civil rights movement clarifies not only the past but also “what it takes to do it again” (207). As anti-racism efforts have grown in the 21st century, Americans have failed to realize the patterns that make modern activism similarly disruptive, diverse, and promising. When critics call for “better” leaders in the 21st century—leaders like the mythologized King and Parks—it “misses the fact that we have many Kings and Parkses” at hand (207-8).

Theoharis also follows up on the “burnout” that activists often feel, regardless of era: “The fact that it took months before the Montgomery bus boycott garnered substantive media coverage, and the way it was dismissed and demonized, resemble the ways movements are treated today” (208). Fighting for social change is hard and often painful, but young people especially continue to do so in response to social evil. The author mentions “mass incarceration, police violence, deportation, school inequality, rising Islamophobia, global injustice, and environmental racism” as pertinent issues at the time of the book’s publication. The core issues and the spirit of activism have remained consistent since the civil rights era, though critics insist that modern activism is fundamentally different and inferior to some imagined golden age of Martin Luther King Jr.; what the author’s evidence suggests, however, is that if King were alive, he would likely promote a more open and honest reckoning with structural racism and inequality.