Saving the Soul of Georgia

Donald Hollowell—a brilliant and courageous lawyer known as Georgia’s ‘Mr. Civil Rights’—has long deserved a biography to match his talents. In Saving the Soul of Georgia, this lion of the civil rights movement finally receives what he has so richly deserved. Daniels’s book is a magnificent contribution to the literature on the black freedom struggle and the local lawyers who helped sustain it.

* author of Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement, winner of the Bancroft Prize *

Maurice Daniels’s compelling biography of Donald Hollowell shines light on a pioneer attorney whose work in the trenches was absolutely essential to the civil rights movement. Hollowell was the preferred attorney for the student activists pushing the struggle forward, his contributions ranging from the back roads of Georgia to federal courtrooms, from plotting legal strategy to negotiating and advising. Daniels gives us a wonderful portrait of an important civil rights activist and adds another layer to our understanding of what it took to create a successful movement.

* editor of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement *

Not nearly enough has been written or is widely known about the giants on whose shoulders President Obama is fond of saying he stands. One of those giants is Donald L. Hollowell. Hollowell's shoulders offered more than legal representation. When one of us needed reassurance or bail or defense, he was always there, day or night. Students used to sing, 'King is our leader; Hollowell is our lawyer. And we shall not be moved.' What my generation and the generations to come need to help us keep our eyes on the prize is a book like Saving the Soul of Georgia: Donald L. Hollowell and the Struggle for Civil Rights. It should be required reading for every teacher and student in America, so that they can know that freedom is not free and understand what it takes to bring us closer to a more perfect union.

* journalist and author of To The Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement *

This compelling biography of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s chief attorney in Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s delivers on the promise of its title. . . . With his close attention to court proceedings, Daniels penetrates the often-dense tangle of legal procedures. . . . In Daniels's hands, court proceedings come to life with a narrative accessible to lawyers and nonlawyers alike. . . . The inclusion of twenty-seven carefully selected photographs further brings to life one of the best biographies of the civil rights era.

* Journal of American History *

Daniels's book make a point that needs emphasis: that embedded within the grassroots movements that now occupy much scholarly attention were thousands of everyday legal confrontations. . . . A well-researched account that explores much-neglected aspects of the history of the civil rights movement. From the grassroots to the apex of the movement, the author shows how scholars can move beyond the conventional narrative arcs of the freedom struggle, but how difficult it is, in the end, to escape their force.

* American Historical Review *

Dean of the School of Social Work and founder of the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies at the University of Georgia, Daniels is well qualified to write about Georgia’s civil rights lawyers. This book will remind teachers and scholars of [Hollowell’s] wider importance to both Georgia history and American legal history.

* Journal of Southern Histo