Books by Bruce Hartford

"Troublemaker" Memories of the Freedom Movement is the personal, boots-on-the-ground story of Bruce Hartford's service in the American Civil Rights Movement. One of the many Jews who allied themselves with the African-American struggle for justice and equality in the early and mid-1960s, he served first with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and then on the field staff of Dr. King's organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Alabama and Mississippi.He participated in the 1963 March on Washington and was present for Dr. King's " I Have a Dream" speech. He was active in the Selma Voting Rights Campaign and was part of the March to Montgomery, actions for which he and others were awarded the "Foot Soldiers for Justice" Congressional Medal.After the Selma campaign he became director of the Crenshaw County Alabama voter registration project in 1965, then participated in the Meredith March Against Fear in Mississippi in 1966, and until 1967 was a field organizer in Grenada, Mississippi during the long and bloody struggle to end segregation and win voter rights in that county.This first-person account provides a clear, easy to read, three-dimensional view of what it was like to be a nonviolent “troublemaker for good” in mid-century America. It is a forceful, humble, warm, and humorous story about how one individual, together with others of the same mind, helped curve the path of history – a story as important in today's climate as it was in the sixties.

Winning the vote for southern Blacks was the crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. With roots going back decades, the fight for the ballot came to a climax in 1965 with the Selma Voting Rights Campaign and the March to Montgomery. Here is a day-by-day chronicle of a battle in which unexpected actors and unsung heroes took a stand against the violent forces of segregation and state power that for so many generations had dominated their lives. It's a tale of how young students and old sharecroppers, maids and janitors, preachers, teachers, and uneducated day laborers came together under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and their own grassroots organizations to march for freedom, dignity, and respect. It's the story of what thousands of men and women, boys and girls, did -- and endured -- to become fully part of that "We the People" who make up America. And it's also an account of how Afro-Americans in Alabama, armed only with their own nonviolent courage, confronted and overcame white supremacy, economic retribution, Klan assassinations, and brutal police violence.