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Paul Kix tells us the thrilling story of the fight to end Jim Crow, led by the greatest figures of the Civil Rights Movement—and won by children. We spend the hour with Kix talking about his book, You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live: Ten Weeks In Birmingham That Changed America.
Read Transcript of Interview with Paul Kix
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Project Confrontation
It was the Spring of 1963. The civil rights movement was in disarray: the victory of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott hadn’t translated into weakening Jim Crow 
anywhere in the South—not even in Montgomery, where the buses had gone back being segregated.
Something had to be done; something drastic and dramatic that would focus the nation’s attention on the fight for racial justice.
That something was Project Confrontation: a plan to challenge Jim Crow in the very apotheosis of white supremacist terror, Birmingham, Alabama — a place journalist Edward R. Murrow likened to Nazi Germany.
Ten Weeks in Birmingham, Alabama
Journalist Paul Kix tells the riveting story of those ten weeks in Birmingham that changed America in his book, You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live.
During that time, Project Confrontation managed — just barely — to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s a story of incredible courage facing vicious brutality, of brilliant strategy and true genius and, finally, a story of what people can do when they are prepared to die in order to live in freedom.
About the Author
Paul Kix is a nonfiction author and journalist. He’s also the author of The Saboteur, a best-selling account of the world’s most daring World War II commando. You Have To Be Prepared To Die Before You Can Begin To Live is out from Celadon Press.