If Your Back's Not Bent: The Role of the Citizenship Education Program in the Civil Rights Movement

If Your Back's Not Bent tells the story of the last surviving member of Dr. Martin Luther King's inner circle. From her impoverished upbringing in North Carolina in the 1930s, joining the movement in the 1950s, to being a part of the entourage in Oslo, Norway, when King accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and up-to-now, Ms. Cotton shares her insights as a visionary, peacemaker, and lifelong civil rights activist. nAn unsung hero of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inner circle reveals the true story behind the Citizenship Education Program--a little-known training program for disenfranchised citizens--reflecting on its huge importance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and explaining its indisputable relevance to our nation today. nNobody can ride your back if your back's not bent, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously proclaimed at the end of a Citizenship Education Program (CEP), an adult grassroots training program born of the work of the Tennessee Highlander Folk School, expanded by King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and directed by activist Dorothy Cotton. This program, called the best-kept secret of the twentieth-century's civil rights movement, was critical in preparing legions of disenfranchised citizens across the South to work with existing systems of local government to gain access to resources they were entitled to and to demonstrate peaceably against injustice, even in the face of violence and hatred. n nFor the first time, Cotton, the only woman in King's inner circle, offers her account of this important project, which the media, focused at the time on marches and demonstrations, largely ignored. Cotton reveals the significant accomplishments and the drama of the CEP training and describes how the program transformed its participants, inspiring them, in turn, to transform their communities, and ultimately the country as a whole, into a place of greater freedom and justice for all. A timely account of fighting inequality, If Your Back's Not Bent shows how CEP was key to the civil rights movement's success and how the lessons of the program can serve our troubled democracy now.n