Most scholarship on the civil rights movement has focused on the Deep South, even though border states like Kentucky also had segregation laws and a history of racialized violence. African American Kentuckians challenged racial segregation, too, but they adapted their approaches as needed, from familiar protest models in the state's larger cities to more unique strategies in isolated rural communities, where they constituted only a tiny fraction of the population.

In Freedom on the Border, 103 Kentucky civil rights activists recall their struggles to dismantle legal segregation in Kentucky. Their stories, introduced and contextualized by two historians, vividly describe pivotal moments such as the 1964 March on Frankfort, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition, they unearth less familiar episodes that challenge official narratives of the movement. This book enlarges southern civil rights movement history and suggests that the battle for black equality was not just a series of mass demonstrations and campaigns. It was the sum of countless individual acts of resistance stretching past the borders of the former Confederacy and beyond the twentieth century.

Catherine Fosl, associate professor of women's/ gender studies and director of the Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research at the University of Louisville, is the author of two previous books.

Tracy E. K'Meyer, associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Louisville, is the author of Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South: The Story of Koinonia Farm.

Reviews:

There is much work that needs to be done when it comes to writing the history of Kentucky. Fortunately, a number of steps have been taken to correct this, and oral history projects are a key component in filling in the gaps. "Freedom on the Border" is one example of how these interviews can be used to further explore the role of Kentuckians within the context of major events within the history of the country. They are much needed, and hopefully this will be the first of many such efforts.-David A Serafini, Bowling Green Daily News

The book, which shares the activists own recollection of the struggles to dismantle legal segregation in Kentucky, is the first published study of the civil rights movement in Kentucky.-Lexington Herald-Leader

These stories remind us that a social justice movement does not end when laws are passed or crowds dwindle, but continues as long as people experience inequality and act against it.-Linda Elisabeth Beattie, Courier-Journal