You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America

Author Paul Kix was attempting to explain the present day to his children, a world where police violence against African Americans has not dissipated. The deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020 due to excessive force by law enforcement caused nationwide outrage and led to protests. Protests against authority, even in the face of police backlash, had been a hallmark of the Civil Rights movement. One of the key faceoffs began in Birmingham in 1963.

In January 1963, a new approach was being considered in civil disobedience. The younger members of the Civil Rights movement sought to rejuvenate the movement after a demonstration in 1962 in Albany, Georgia had fizzled out. “Project X” was a newfangled method of protest guaranteed to make waves. Martin Luther King Jr. and others were willing to try anything to shake things up.

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live adeptly scrutinizes a crucial moment in the struggle for civil rights. Kix writes an outstanding study of perseverance in the face of adversity, men and women who braved the slings and arrows of hatred in order to force change for the better.