{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668002698?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1668002698","authors":["Elaine Weiss"],"book_id":"9781668002698","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/spell-freedom-9781668002698","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781668002698.jpg?v=85f35fa8b46d42c1","description":"The acclaimed author of the “stirring, definitive, and engrossing” (NPR) The Woman’s Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them. Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights—and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists—many of them women—trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, “Mother of the Movement.” In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove , Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781668002698","publication_date":"20250304","publisher":"Atria/One Signal Publishers","slug":"spell-freedom","subtitle":"The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement","title":"Spell Freedom"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"YAN051270","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Civil & Human Rights for Teens","score":0.7418,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"YAN025220","confidence_band":"medium","label":"20th Century America for Teens","score":0.7407,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"YAN038110","confidence_band":"medium","label":"African American U.S. History for Teens","score":0.74,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"YAN051270","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Civil & Human Rights for Teens","score":0.7418,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"YAN025220","confidence_band":"medium","label":"20th Century America for Teens","score":0.7407,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"YAN038110","confidence_band":"medium","label":"African American U.S. History for Teens","score":0.74,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"HIS036060","confidence_band":"high","label":"20th-Century America","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL004000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Civil Rights","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"SOC070000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Race & Ethnic Relations","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Civil & Human Rights for Teens","score":0.7418,"slug":"civil-human-rights-for-teens"},{"label":"20th Century America for Teens","score":0.7407,"slug":"20th-century-america-for-teens"},{"label":"African American U.S. History for Teens","score":0.74,"slug":"african-american-u-s-history-for-teens"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers interested in the grassroots history of the Civil Rights Movement","Good for readers interested in voting rights and community education"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Bruce Watson"],"book_id":"9781644210109","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781644210109.jpg?v=7abf136e43c29fc1","score":0.7511,"title":"Freedom Summer for Young People","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781644210109"},{"authors":["Lawrence Goldstone"],"book_id":"9781338323481","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781338323481.jpg?v=cb25c1a359cd96bf","score":0.7148,"title":"Stolen Justice: the Struggle for African American Voting Rights (scholastic Focus)","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781338323481"},{"authors":["Lynda Blackmon Lowery"],"book_id":"9780147512161","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780147512161.jpg?v=db4e18eb58697f44","score":0.7049,"title":"Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780147512161"},{"authors":["Elaine Weiss","Elaine F. 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McGuire"],"book_id":"9780307389244","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780307389244.jpg?v=40da7c9b32f5c83d","score":0.6714,"title":"At the Dark End of the Street","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780307389244"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:civil rights history"],"label":"History","score":0.4536,"slug":"history"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:social justice"],"label":"Social","score":0.0723,"slug":"social"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:freedom summer"],"label":"Summer","score":0.0349,"slug":"summer"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:education"],"label":"Education","score":0.0309,"slug":"education"},{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Civil Rights","score":0.0074,"slug":"civil-rights"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Civil Rights Movement, Voting rights, Community education.","Themes: History, Social, Summer.","Reading lane: Civil & Human Rights for Teens and 20th Century America for Teens."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.95,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["Readers interested in the grassroots history of the Civil Rights Movement","Readers interested in voting rights and community education"],"themes":["Civil Rights Movement","Voting rights","Community education"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":90,"goodreads_ratings_count":297,"goodreads_reviews_count":68,"quality_score":0.908}}