Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mississippi's Black Cotton

Mississippi's Black Cotton

Obee, John
Cotton, MacArthur
Hannah-Jones, Nikole

Paperback

Biographies GeneralHistorical Figures

Publisher Price: $27.95

ISBN10: 1588385868
ISBN13: 9781588385864
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Published: Mar 1 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.86
Height: 0.65 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

The literature of the civil rights movement is replete with stories about the major actors in the movement, including, for example, Martin Luther King, but there is little focus on the MacArthur Cottons of the era: the young Black men and women who at great risk to their physical and mental health chose to become involved in the movement when so many others chose not to. Without these young Black people there would have been no movement, and what was accomplished with the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s would never have happened.

This was particularly true in Mississippi, the most repressive of all fifty states, and one that had sponsored state terrorism to ensure that white supremacy reigned supreme. Despite having no real reason to believe that change could happen, MacArthur Cotton and those like him believed that they had to act. In MacArthur's case, his actions were in the tradition of his activist family, and he relates his involvement with many of the important figures in the Mississippi movement, such as Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer.

Importantly, he also honors others like him, who are largely unknown to history, such as the Greenes and McGees in Greenwood, who were waging their own war against their oppressive state. While having been imprisoned many times and having lived in a constant state of terror, Cotton persisted as a foot soldier in a war and, as with all veterans of wars, was left with emotional and psychological scars. Despite the toll that it took on him as a person, however, he remains a committed activist to this day.

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