"Spell Freedom" with Elaine Weiss

On Tuesday, May 6, at 6 p.m. CT / 7 p.m. ET, the Clinton Presidential Center Presents will welcome Author Eliane Weiss for a conversation about her new book, “Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement.”

Weiss’ newest work continues her exploration of the untold stories in American history. In “Spell Freedom,” she takes readers deep into the mid 20th Century civil rights movement, offering a new perspective on events – from the grassroots up – and introducing a new cadre of American heroines and heroes, Black and white, whose names may not be familiar, but whose courage changed our nation.

Weiss’ newest work continues her exploration of the untold stories in American history. In "Spell Freedom," she takes readers deep into the mid 20th Century civil rights movement, offering a new perspective on events – from the grassroots up – and introducing a new cadre of American heroines and heroes, Black and white, whose names may not be familiar, but whose courage changed our nation.

ASL interpretation is available during our programs.

Clinton Presidential Center Presents is a partnership between the Clinton Foundation, Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, and Clinton Presidential Library.

About "Spell Freedom"

Septima Clark, a grandmotherly Black South Carolina school teacher; Esau Jenkins, a striving Sea Island businessman; Bernice Robinson, a vivacious Charleston beautician; and Myles Horton, a white Tennessean who called himself a “radical hillbilly.” In the summer of 1954, they met at the Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Horton, and united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the literacy test that was a prerequisite to registering to vote – and designed to disenfranchise them.

Working together, Clark – whom Dr. King would later call “Mother of the Movement” – Jenkins, Robinson and Horton created the Citizenship Schools project, starting with a single secret classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, over 900 citizenship schools had been established in eleven southern states, quietly preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights – and vote. The program empowered Black southerners, making them “ready from within” for the struggle ahead, while nurturing a generation of local leaders – a majority of them women – who went on to become the organizational backbone of the Civil Rights Movement.

Elaine Weiss is a journalist and author whose writing has been recognized with prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists, her by-line has appeared in many national publications.

She is the author of three books of narrative history. The highly-acclaimed “The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote” has been hailed as a “riveting, nail-biting political thriller” with powerful parallels to today’s political environment. “The Woman’s Hour” was a “GoodReads” Readers’ Choice Award winner, short-listed for the 2019 Chautauqua Prize, and received the American Bar Association’s highest honor, the 2019 Silver Gavel Award.

Her first book, “was excerpted in “Smithsonian Magazine” and featured on C-Span and public radio stations nationwide.

Her newest book, “Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement,” carries readers into the heart of the 20th century’s civil rights and voting rights struggle, and has won praise as a “powerful, intimate, and enlightening book” with “elegant writing, masterful storytelling, and prodigious research.”

Elaine is a popular public speaker and frequent media commentator, and was an historical advisor for the Broadway musical SUFFS. She lives in Baltimore with her husband, and they have two grown children. When not at her desk, she can be found paddling her little purple kayak on the Chesapeake Bay.

Host or Publisher Clinton Presidential Center