Author event with Elaine Weiss

Parnassus Books, in partnership with Nashville Public Library, Nashville Public Library Foundation, Fisk University, American Baptist College, and Tn League of Women Voters, are pleased to present an evening with Elaine Weiss. Elaine will in conversation with Joyce Searcy as they discuss Elaine's new book, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement. This event will take place in the auditorium of the Nashville Public Library's main branch downtown, 615 Church Street .

Auditorium doors will open at 5:45, and the event will begin at 6:30.

Elaine Weiss will have a signing line directly following her presentation on stage.

Tickets:

This is a free event, but because space is limited, you must have a ticket to attend.

Tickets do not come with a copy of Spell Freedom, but copies will be for sale at the event, along with The Women's Hour while supplies last.

Parking:

Parking is available in the Library/Church Street Parking Garage. The 1st 1.5 hours are free with validated parking (provided inside the library lobby at the circulation desk) Regular rates apply after the 1.5 hours.

About the book:

The acclaimed author of the "stirring, definitive, and engrossing" (NPR) The Woman's Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.

In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them.

Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights--and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists--many of them women--trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, "Mother of the Movement."

In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove, Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present.

About the Author:
Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. In addition to Spell Freedom, she is the author of Fruits of Victory: The Woman's Land Army of the Great War; and The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. Elaine lives with her husband in Baltimore, Maryland. Find out more at ElaineWeiss.com.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Nashville Public Library - Main Library Auditorium, 615 Church Street, Nashville, United States