You Have To Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Live is an in depth look into1963 Birmingham, Alabama. Project C, as it was named, planned to end racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Formulated by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activists Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel spent 10 weeks fighting and campaigning for their mission. Eventually garnering enough attention and support that The Civil Rights Bills of 1965 was passed.

Paul Kix did a thorough job researching the SCLC and Project C and it shows throughout the whole book. What I appreciated was the honestly in the drama behind the scenes because it kept the pace of the book moving. Despite being a nonfiction, it didn't always feel like one which kept it from feeling stale or overdone.

I knew a fair bit about Birmingham, King and the SCLC but I walked away from this book learning a lot more.

Thank you Celadon Books for an ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the amazing publisher for the ARC of this title! I am so grateful to be auto-approved for this title!
I look forward to reading and reviewing.

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.

I really enjoyed this book. I devoured it in a little over a day. I just couldn't turn it off. I've lived in Alabama my whole life, and I've heard the stories about the struggle for Birmingham Civil Rights for as long as I remember. But even so, there were things in this book that I've never been told. For example, I had no idea how heavily the movement relied on children. I knew children were a PART of the movement, but I didn't realize how much of the backbone they really were. I also didn't know about King's struggle to make some of the decisions that he made as a leader.

Overall, I found this book engrossingly informative - it shed new light on the Birmingham Race Struggle that really opened my eyes. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in history, the Civil Rights Movement, Alabama history, etc.

Brilliantly written, and highly relatable - even to someone like me on the white side of the fence.