A detailed look at the Birmingham Campaign that occurred over ten weeks in 1963. He focuses in on 4 men: Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel. They were the leaders of the campaign to end segregation in Birmingham. This specific event in time was one I was not familiar with and I learned a great deal from this book. I highly recommend this one!

Paul Kix covers an essential part of American history with the 1963 Birmingham Campaign in You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live. This book should be required reading, and I learned so much from this one.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Paul Kix keeps the focus tight on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's ten-week campaign to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, using it to frame the larger question of civil rights in the United States. The result is not only a work of history, but a strategy manual as Martin Luther King, Jr. and the others leading the SCLC effort work to recover from their previous failures and adjust to moves made by the powers that be in Birmingham - and the Kennedy administration. It digs deep into the decisions made, like the one to put children (aided by coded messages from a disc jockey) on the front lines of the movement. Kix writes in propulsive, cinematic fashion, with an eye for the telling detail. He explores every internecine struggle, every moment of weakness, and in so doing produces a humanizing, galvanizing look at America.

A deep dive into the Birmingham Campaign and Project C while focusing on the joint efforts of local activists and SCLC and Martin Luther King's work. A must-read!

Thank you to Celadon Books for an advanced copy for an honest review.

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America is a compelling work of narrative non-fiction describing the 10-week campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. This strategic activism campaign, called Project C, was a joint effort among Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and local civil rights leaders, including Fred Shuttlesworth. Birmingham was under the control of ugly and vicious racists.
This book reads like a novel but documents an important part of American history. It is powerfully told and meticulously researched. Included are the harrowing details of the cruelty inflicted on the Black residents of Birmingham both before and during the protests. The brave Black residents of Birmingham were fighting for their lives against horrors most of us cannot fathom, for rights most of us take for granted. The world finally paid attention when Birmingham city officials and police assaulted peacefully protesting children with beatings, police dogs, and water cannons. This book emphasizes how the Project C campaign was pivotal in the eventual enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. You Have to Be Prepared to Die brings the past to life and is essential to our understanding of American history and of the white supremacy and assaults on hard-won rights that continue to plague our country today.
Thank you to Celadon Books and NetGalley for a copy to review. #CeladonBooks #CeladonReads #partner

Incredible book. Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this early. I am looking forward to when I re-read, but this was a wild ride that really brought us to how we got here.

I was eleven years old, my family preparing to move from my childhood home, my dad’s childhood home. I didn’t read newspapers or watch the news. The worst thing in my life was missing my fifth grade teacher’s wedding that June.

Elsewhere, children my age and a few years older were gathering in solidarity in nonviolent protest in Birmingham, Alabama, a city run by vicious, all-powerful segregationists and white supremists. They faced army tanks and fire hoses and attack dogs. Entire schools emptied. These children knew they would be arrested and jailed. They found the courage to do what their parents, dependent on white employers, could not.

Bobby Kennedy was challenged to consider the protests as a father, not a politician. He realized that legislation was imperative, and pushed his brother Jack.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had decided on Birmingham for their campaign. During a tumultuous ten weeks, the leaders didn’t always agree, and King retreated to the hotel room, waiting and watching.

During his time in the Birmingham jail, he drafted an inspired letter, a manifesto to inspire other ministers to join the movement. Inspired by a series of thinkers, from the Social Gospel to Reinhold Niebuhr to Gandhi, and his Baptist faith, King was a hesitant leader and an eloquent spokesperson who understood that the cross was at his journey’s end.

Day after day, leaders like Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth walked out of the church with forty or so, knowing they would be arrested by the waiting police. But the campaign was fizzling out. They needed thousands of protesters. They needed to force Bull Connor to lash out, to catch the attention of the world.

James Bevel went to the children, taught them nonviolence, inspired them to carry on the fight for equality. It was controversial. And it worked.

I read with a sense of dread, knowing what was to come. The incomprehensible hatred, the courageous determination. I was reading history, and I was reading legacy, and I was reading about a battle that continues today.

This is a moving, immersive history of a pivotal moment in time, vividly portraying the flawed and courageous leaders.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

One of the best books of the year and required reading for anyone even remotely interested in our country and how we got here. Paul Kix includes the story of his family to show how the story continues to resonate today.

Kix's work looks at the Birmingham campaign in 1963, but also its leadup and considers its fallout. If you have think you know the typical story, this book shines a light on the complexity of the story. There have been other books that have looked at this, such as Diane McWhorter's work and Glen Eskew's academic work, but Kix makes the story readable for a non-academic audience. In doing so, he shifts the narrative from focusing solely on Dr. King, to the larger cast of characters responsible for the success of Birmingham. James Bevel gets the attention he's due. But, more importantly, Fred Shuttlesworth remains a focus throughout the book. I often see Shuttlesworth as the star of the movement whose important is overshadowed by historians because of King. this book works a lot to correct that mistake.

Kix shows what was at stake in Birmingham, not just seeing it as a random march that involved kids. I would go as far as saying that Kix examines the thought process and their consciences. Throughout the story, Kix puts, at front and center, the moral quandary that the leaders dealt with in their planing, comparing it to Gethsemane. He also is not afraid to show where history remains unanswered, such as King's actions in his room.

I would have liked to have read more from the kids' perspectives, as I think they are critical in analyzing the success/failure and strategies of the movement in Birmingham. While they may not have had much to say or published at the time, I'm sure there are lots of interviews with them after the fact. It would have really brought a great book full circle.

Also, citations were placed randomly after words instead of at the end of sentences (although this might just be a formatting issue for ebooks, but the publisher may want to make sure this is corrected)

Receiving a new book from Celadon Books is always a treat. Their objective is to publish a small number of highly curated titles each year, both fiction and nonfiction, that are classic and uncommon. Every book I have read published by Celadon has more than met that objective and You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live is no exception.

This is a powerful book, starting with the prologue. Author Paul Kix is a white man married to a Black woman, with children who identify as Black. He has a unique perspective and his balanced, unbiased narrative puts the infamous events of the Birmingham Campaign that took place sixty years ago in context. Kix makes no judgement but rather lets readers draw their own conclusions. So much has been written about Birmingham that it would seem we already know all there is to know, but Kix has done his homework: he focuses on a 10-day period; his research is meticulous and thorough, uncovering motives, actions, denials and manipulations on all sides that no one wanted revealed.

As he lays out the facts Kix does an excellent job of making it apparent that while there were vast differences, both sides also had much in common: ulterior motives, hunger for power, willingness to do whatever it took and use whoever it took, as well as dedication, commitment and bravery. Everybody’s reputation suffers a little when some of the most gruesome events and plans are described. There is no easy answer to the question, “Was it worth it?” And I believe that is Kix’s intention: not to provide answers but to provoke an endless stream of questions, to see where it all began, where we are now and where we may be going to end up.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is the most remembered figured from the Birmingham Campaign, but others were involved: the Kennedys, activist and actor Harry Belafonte, local ministers, career activists – and local Birmingham residents and children – many, many children, very young children, children who were forced to march into lunging, snarling, biting dogs or firemen spraying, knocking them down, injuring them with fire hoses. We’ve seen pictures of those children for years, but what we may not have realized or understood until author Kix points it out is that the philosophy of the organizers of the Birmingham Campaign was to employ something called “strategic activism.” Drastic measures were necessary to show the effects of segregation in the South to the rest of the nation, to show to just what lengths those in power in Birmingham would go to keep that power. The organizers wanted the attention of the press. They needed to incite violence to show the protestors were non-violent. And outside of Birmingham money and politics rather than concern for the plight of the victims affected the support the organizers did or did not receive.

I repeat, this is a powerful book, thought-provoking, eye-opening, sobering. Author Kix masterfully combines the pace and readability of a novel with the facts and detail of a history book, evoking strong emotion as the tension and suspense build and each day’s events unfold. Thanks to Celadon Books for providing an advance copy of You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live to me as a Celadon Reader for my reading pleasure and honest opinion. This is a complex, truthful, well-crafted book and I recommend it without hesitation. All opinions are my own.

I only have positive things to say about this book. I was truly captivated and engaged by the story about MLK Jr. and the SCLC and others. There are so many major and important people and each one has a background and context. There are plenty of quotes throughout that help the reader understand a point in a person's own words. It is clear that the author spent a lot of time and care researching the events that took place and brought it all together in a cohesive story. I did not know much about Project C before reading this, and this book provides insights about many of the moving parts to show how and what took place during the protests in Birmingham.

A deep dive into the 10-week campaign to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Kix attempts to give us an in-depth look at Project C, as it was known and formulated by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

I remember learning the cliff notes version of this time period in school. This book really helps bring so much more to light. It's so important to look back and understand our history, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. It's honest. It's brave. It's complex. It's easy to become horrified by the accounts shared in this volume but I find it a necessary read to continue to move us all in the right direction.

Earlier this month, April 12th, was the 60th anniversary of the arrest of Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. That arrest and the surrounding events changed the course of history and many Americans' lives of the past, present, and future forever.

History has a somewhat understandable tendency to become flattened into a linear narrative. It started here, this happened, then this, and then... success! The important points which fit into a succinct piece of a larger narrative are remembered while other details are shed, especially those bits which ultimately shape American mythology. I find this especially true when it comes to the civil rights movement. It's easy to feel as though the leaders of the day were following some sort of choreographed blueprint, they did the thing, were successful, good vanquished evil, and a whitewashed version of Martin Luther King Jr. was entered into the history books. Amen.

Meanwhile, it was all much more opaque and complex; the challenges, setbacks, and uncertainty, the losses they had to push beyond, the violence they had to endure, the opposition they had to weather from many directions, including within their own community, the doubt with which they had to contend from within themselves. It has taken generations to settle upon what is a generally accepted version of events we can hold up and cheer as progress and that version is a simplified account, undoubtedly.

Enter journalist and author Paul Kix. Inspired by a famous historical photograph and his family's own grappling with the reality of present day racial inequality, he set out to write a definitive history of the Birmingham Campaign.

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America is a work of narrative non-fiction detailing the 1963 direct action campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, a joint effort of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and local leaders. Birmingham in 1963 was considered the most segregated city in America and a location of particular cruelty under the reign of infamous racist Bull Connor.

This is the type of historical account that really brings the past to life in a way which not only informs, but also allows for deeper understanding of a part of history we think we already know. This era of American history is one of particular importance as we presently witness hard fought and won rights being removed and continue reckoning with the still deeply buried and stubbornly enduring roots of our nation's white supremacy.

Well written and researched this a must read to better understand our own past so that we may better navigate and move beyond the challenges of our present.

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live tells the story of the 1963 Birmingham Campaign. It is written more like a fiction book, which I thought was pretty interesting way of telling this history. My main problems come from the lack of detail which made the history and historical figures feel very flat.

Paul Kix’s You Have to be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live is a mouthful of a title, but it perfectly captures the feeling of the book. The title is derived from a statement made by one of the leaders of the movement to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, a hotbed of racism and violence. The book reads like a novel, with people at odds but with a common purpose against those who hate them purely for the color of their skin. It ponders the ways to get the press, and subsequently the presidency and the public to see the inequality and injustice. It reaches the fever pitch of the marches and movement in Birmingham and the horrors that ensued, followed by the hope for progress and change. But this is not a novel. This is our history, told superbly by Kix, that is both shameful and inspiring. Focusing purely on the events of Birmingham keeps the book from becoming overwhelming or introducing too many players. And yet it is also enough to show the constant challenges Black leadership faced and the somewhat conflicting role that Martin Luther King played in the Civil Rights movement. King is undoubtedly a brilliant, charismatic man that drew attention and respect, willing to make sacrifices of himself and his family. But this could also disenfranchise the people leading movements in communities that he took on as initiatives for change. Fred Shuttlesworth, flawed as he was, experienced this in his hometown of Birmingham. He could receive the public attention for decisions that weren’t his, like what happened with Bevel and the Black children in Birmingham. This book shows how difficult it was (and still can be) to force change, and how often, though it may be one man (or person) that stands as figurehead of a movement, there are many more people behind them willing to not always receive the credit if progress is made. Be horrified by the accounts of this book. Be inspired by the accomplishments of the Black people fighting for equality. And last but not least, be impressed by how Kix tells an engaging and emotional tale of an ugly time in our history that you won’t want to put down. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This story spanned the 10-week campaign in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham Alabama. This story delves deep into the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth and James Bevel. The campaign was known as project C and tied in events of the time and how they have played out in history. This book highlights the effects strategic activism can have and helps gain an understanding of how they work.

This was a tough read. The story read well, and was written more like a fiction novel instead of non-fiction which helped hold my interest in the story. I also went into this one blind, which was tough at times – but also led to a great understanding of what I was reading. I really enjoyed the writing and it gave me plenty to think about. It is always wonderful reading about people who have made such great differences in the lives we take for granted – and for that I am truly thankful. My only downside with this one was that at time it did feel that the author went too deep in the details, and it was long. Had a few things been kept at mentions versus having a full explanation I think I would have enjoyed it more overall. Still an amazing read though.

Thank you so much to @CeladonBooks for sending me this arc copy and allowing me to leave an honest review.