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You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live
- Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America
- Narrated by: Jaime Lincoln-Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
Long-listed, New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2023
This program features a prologue and epilogue read by the author.
From journalist Paul Kix, the riveting story, never before fully told, of the 1963 Birmingham Campaign—ten weeks that would shape the course of the Civil Rights Movement and the future of America.
It’s one of the iconic photographs of American history: A Black teenager, a policeman and his lunging German Shepherd. Birmingham, Alabama, May of 1963. In May of 2020, as reporter Paul Kix stared at a different photo–that of a Minneapolis police officer suffocating George Floyd–he kept returning to the other photo taken half a century earlier, haunted by its echoes. What, Kix wondered, was the full legacy of the Birmingham photo? And of the campaign it stemmed from?
In You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live, Paul Kix takes the listener behind the scenes as he tells the story of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s pivotal 10 week campaign in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. At the same time, he also provides a window into the minds of the four extraordinary men who led the campaign—Martin Luther King, Jr., Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and James Bevel.
With captivating prose that sounds like a thriller, Kix’s audiobook is the first to zero in on the ten weeks of Project C, as it was known—its specific history and its echoes sounding throughout our culture now. It’s about Where It All Began, for sure, but it’s also the key to understanding Where We Are Now and Where We Will Be. As the fight for equality continues on many fronts, Project C is crucial to our understanding of our own time and the impact that strategic activism can have.
A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.
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Critic reviews
“Through the careful accretion of intimate detail, Paul Kix makes a convincing case that Birmingham 1963 was the linchpin of the civil rights era and perhaps the most consequential ten-week period in modern American history. His portraits of the Birmingham saga's many heroes (sung and unsung) are poignant, revealing, and finely drawn."–Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Hellhound on His Trail
"An eloquent contribution to the literature of civil rights and the ceaseless struggle to attain them."–Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live walks us, in profound detail, through the long days and nights that would lead to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It offers specifics of heroism never before or rarely enough told. And it unpacks, without sensation, opportunities disrupted so that our generation may learn, and in learning, claim our own for our role in the bending of that storied moral arc. For we who count ourselves among those specific numbers, join me in welcoming, gratefully, Paul Kix’s brilliantly documented and beautifully rendered testimony, a life-giving offering to his children. And mine. And yours."–asha bandele, New York Times bestselling author, activist, and poet
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Story
Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.
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Excellent
- By Judith Princz on 05-15-19
By: Taylor Branch
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My Life, My Love, My Legacy
- By: Coretta Scott King, Barbara Reynolds
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Phylicia Rashad
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The life story of Coretta Scott King - wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular 20th-century American civil rights activist - as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising Black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.
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Inspirational memoir
- By Jean on 01-30-17
By: Coretta Scott King, and others
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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
- A Personal History of Our Times
- By: Howard Zinn
- Narrated by: David Strathairn
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, tells his personal stories about more than 30 years of fighting for social change, from teaching at Spelman College to recent protests against war. A former bombardier in World War II, Zinn emerged in the civil rights movement as a powerful voice for justice. Although he's a fierce critic, he gives us reason to hope that by learning from history and engaging politically, we can make a difference in the world.
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mind blowing
- By WILLIAM on 11-27-19
By: Howard Zinn
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Righteous Troublemakers
- Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America
- By: Al Sharpton
- Narrated by: Al Sharpton
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Righteous Troublemakers shines a light on everyday people called to do extraordinary things—like Pauli Murray, whose early work inspired Thurgood Marshall, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus months before Rosa Parks did the same, and Gwen Carr, whose private pain in losing her son Eric Garner stoked her public activism against police brutality. Sharpton also gives his personal take on more widely known individuals, revealing overlooked details, historical connections, and a perspective informed by years of working in the social justice movement.
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Thank God for this book knowledge is power
- By JOAN REID on 02-23-22
By: Al Sharpton
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Death of a King
- The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year
- By: Tavis Smiley, David Ritz
- Narrated by: Tavis Smiley
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author and award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley recounts the final 365 days of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life, revealing the minister's trials and tribulations - denunciations by the press, rejection from the president, dismissal by the country's Black middle class and militants, assaults on his character, ideology, and political tactics, to name a few - all of which he had to rise above in order to lead and address the racism, poverty, and militarism that threatened to destroy our democracy.
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An important book
- By Mr X on 02-19-15
By: Tavis Smiley, and others
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The King Years
- Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrated by: Leslie Odom Jr.
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The essential moments of the civil rights movement are introduced and set in historical context by the author of the magisterial America in the King Years trilogy: Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge. Taylor Branch's three-volume history endures as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. With this brief volume, which brings to life the pivotal scenes, he relates the dramatic story of how the movement evolved from a bus strike to a political revolution, and brings this historic achievement to a wider audience.
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Excellent
- By MC on 01-18-15
By: Taylor Branch
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The Dead Are Arising
- The Life of Malcolm X
- By: Les Payne, Tamara Payne
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 18 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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An epic biography of Malcolm X finally emerges, drawing on hundreds of hours of the author's interviews, rewriting much of the known narrative.
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Much more depth than the Haley book.
- By CapitalHeel on 11-03-20
By: Les Payne, and others
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My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
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Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
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Waging a Good War
- A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.
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I was born and raised in Alabama. Jim Crow Era.
- By Moses Pitts on 10-06-22
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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Stonewall
- The Definitive Story of the LGBT Rights Uprising that Changed America
- By: Martin Duberman
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history.
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Not the Stonewall book I was looking for
- By T. Mommy on 10-05-24
By: Martin Duberman
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The Accommodation
- The Politics of Race in an American City
- By: Jim Schutze, John Wiley Price
- Narrated by: Mike Rhyner, John Wiley Price
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The powerful, long-repressed classic of Dallas history that examines the violent and suppressed history of race and racism in the city. Written by longtime Dallas political journalist Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer and currently columnist at D Magazine, The Accommodation follows the story of Dallas from slavery through the civil rights movement and the city’s desegregation efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s.
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Floored
- By Anthony on 09-16-22
By: Jim Schutze, and others
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Let Justice Roll Down
- By: John M. Perkins, Shane Claiborne - foreword
- Narrated by: John M. Perkins, Shane Claiborne
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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John Perkins, founder of Voice of Calvary ministries, was born in New Hebron, Mississippi, in 1930. His family was made up of sharecroppers, and he grew up in grinding poverty, part of a system that preserved prejudice and racism. After his brother was killed, Perkins left Mississippi for California, where he found job opportunities, racism of another kind, and faith in Jesus Christ. He returned to Mississippi to share the gospel and help his own people find equality, justice, and economic independence.
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Struggle against Racism and Oppression
- By Jean on 02-21-17
By: John M. Perkins, and others
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While the World Watched
- A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Carolyn Maull McKinstry
- Narrated by: Felicia Bullock
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.
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Look Back and Live With Greater Understanding
- By jerrie Will on 05-07-21
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Freedom Summer
- The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy
- By: Bruce Watson
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1964, with the civil rights movement stalled, seven hundred college students descended on Mississippi to register black voters, teach in Freedom Schools, and live in sharecroppers' shacks. But by the time their first night in the state had ended, three volunteers were dead, black churches had burned, and America had a new definition of freedom.
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The Long Hot Summer
- By Roy on 08-01-10
By: Bruce Watson
What listeners say about You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- ves
- 08-25-23
1963 a 10 year old
As a person who loves to get into history, I was interested to see who the author was, specifically his race. How was he to identify with the perils of the Era. I'll say he did a spectacular job. He taught me circumstances that either did not know or brought clarity to some pieces of confusion. Thank you. The narration was excellent.
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- JM Moore
- 06-22-24
The history of events that lead us to the civil rights act.
I liked the way it was written as a guideline for the future of America.
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- Diddy
- 06-24-23
A Historical Masterpiece!!!
This was an exceptionally written, educational book. I’m so thankful that I have read this book. I think every student attending school at this very moment needs to read this book.
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- Shirley Hicks
- 09-17-23
Adds insights not mentioned in other Birmingham civil rights histories
Adds insights not previously coveted in other Birmingham civil rights histories. Worth the listen to understand how much organizing and behind the scenes negotiations were necessary to get the results obtained.
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- Joy
- 05-29-23
Riveting!
An important book to understand the history of the civil rights act, and to apply it to present day relationships between the races in our country. Be sure you read this. The audiobook is well done.
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1 person found this helpful
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- marc edge
- 10-06-23
Outstanding
I grew up during some of this mainly the aftermath. Going through the intergration of Alabama schools. This book adds some different perspective and depth to this story
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