Winner of the 2012 Bancroft Prize
Winner of the 2012 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians
"Courage to Dissent is quite simply the best legal history of the civil rights movement. Although centered on Atlanta, it offers the most comprehensive account of movement mobilization and legal change in the civil rights era in the scholarship today. No other legal scholar has gone as far in telling the story of the movement on such a grand scale... This is a compelling and challenging book. Brown-Nagin's book stands as one of the small number of essential texts in the field of modern American legal history. -- Christopher W. Schmidt, Vanderbilt Law Review"A magnificent achievement, brilliantly analyzing significant tensions within the civil rights movement: between different classes, generations, local and national actors, proponents of direct action and litigation, clients and lawyers. Elegantly written, prodigiously researched, and compellingly argued...an extraordinary contribution."--Michael J. Klarman, Harvard Law School, and winner of the 2005 Bancroft Prize for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights
"A masterpiece of rigorous scholarship, careful analysis and good old-fashioned story-telling." --Lani Guinier, Professor of Law, Harvard University
"An absolutely compelling study of the tangled history of civil rights in Atlanta following World War II.... No one interested in the actual operation of our fragmented legal system can ignore it, not to mention anyone interested in finding out more about the remarkable cast of characters who contended with one another in trying to shape the future of the South's most important city." --Sanford Levinson, Professor of Law and Government, University of Texas"An original and convincing approach to the legal history of the civil rights era, a fresh perspective on the Atlanta movement, and a model for integrating the national and local histories of civil rights struggles." --Journal of American History"Excellent, exhaustively researched... Courage to Dissent is a fascinating and fresh look at the legal history of the civil rights movement and should become a standard work in the field." --Journal of Southern History