Stride Toward Freedom, the Montgomery Story

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958 First edition, first printing with publisher's code "H-H." Publisher's blue cloth over black spine lettered in silver, publisher's device stamped in silver to front board; in its original dust jacket with portrait of King to front panel, lettered in red, black, and white over a red, white, and blue background. Very good or better book, with light rubbing to spine ends and corners of boards, light spotting to upper part of front board, and light offsetting to endpapers; good or better unclipped dust jacket, with light wear to spine ends, some rubbing to front panel, light spotting to rear panel, and a small closed tear (truncated) to top edge of rear panel. Overall, a pleasing copy of this important book from the Civil Rights Movement. Stride Toward Freedom is Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s memoir about the year-long boycott of the segregated bus system in Montgomery, Alabama, from Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955 to the ruling of Browder v. Gale on December 20, 1956. Led by King along with the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, the city-wide boycott successfully overturned the Jim Crow law banning African Americans from sitting next to their white neighbors on public buses. Rather than a comprehensive study of the larger Civil Rights Movement in which the protest occurred, Stride Towards Freedom is King's personal account of the smaller events that took place during that year-long boycott and, specifically, his involvement in the process. As he explains in his preface, this book contains "the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to hear the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.". First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Dust Jacket Included. (Inventory #: MLK010)