Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement --

Hello,

I am writing a book about the movement as well as the movement's place in history, one that will be published in 2015 by City Lights. I would love to hear your stories and memories; write to me at benhedin@maintainradiosilence.com and I will reply at once.

Tentatively titled "99 1/2: Stories from the Civil Rights Movement," to be brief, uses the fiftieth anniversaries of the Birmingham campaign, Freedom Summer and so on as occasion to take stock of the movement's legacy, to catch up with some of its players, some famous and some not. My purpose — one of them — is to understand how the movement has been treated by history and folklore, and to show that it did not end after Selma, even though it does in most popular tellings. I try to both revisit some of the more famous, enduring stories while also locating the movement's modern forms. In one chapter, for instance, I profile David Dennis and discuss how the methodology of the Mississippi Summer Project informs the work he and the Algebra Project are doing in public schools across the South.

My fiction, journalism, interviews and essays have appeared in a number of publications, like The New Yorker, Slate, The Nation and The Georgia Review. I am the editor of an anthology, Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader (Norton, 2004) and the host of a podcast series published by the magazine Radio Silence.

Yours most sincerely,
Ben Hedin