(This program was first broadcast on April 30, 2025)

On this encore edition of Midday, we’ll listen to Tom Hall's conversation last spring with author and journalist Elaine Weiss. Her latest book tells the inspirational story of the civil rights activists who offered “citizenship classes” to African Americans throughout the south from 1955-1970.

The story centers around Septima Clark, whom Martin Luither King, Jr. called “the mother of the movement,” and three others who worked tirelessly, and at great personal cost, to develop a system of secret schools. Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and a white activist, Myles Horton, are not household names of the civil rights movement, but this book makes the compelling case that their importance cannot be overstated.

This is Elaine Weiss’ third book of narrative history. She’s written about the Woman’s Land Army in World War I. Her book, The Woman’s Hour, about the suffragist movement, is the source material for the hit Broadway musical, SUFFS. 

This book is called Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement. 

Elaine Weiss joined us in Studio A.