To quote the blues singer Big Maybelle, “There was a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on” in 1963. It began in January, which marked the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and President John F. Kennedy hosted a number of prominent African Americans at a reception in the White House–taking great pains to ensure that the famous black entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr., and his white wife, Mai Britt, were not photographed together–and ended with the cessasation of the thirty-day mourning period for the assassinated president.  In between there were more than a dozen incidents of nationwide importance that affected the fight for black freedom in America. Included among them were the Woolworth sit-ins, George Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama, Malcolm X’s famous speech, Message to the Grass Roots, the Chicago school boycott, the demonstrations in Birmingham, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

Each of Kennedy’s three predecessors had faced the swelling demands of African Americans for equality. Roosevelt responded by signing an executive order prohibiting racial and ethnic discrimination in the defense industry, Truman desegregated the armed forces and the federal work force, and Eisenhower sent troops to enforce a federal court order to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. Arkansas. He also signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction thereby creating a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and developing a commission to investigate the infringement of voting rights for blacks.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, both parties and their chosen candidates gingerly tiptoed around the subject of black rights; if they spoke of it at all, it was in the most general of platitudes. Both men watched with great interest the anti-colonial movement on the continent of Africa and regarded the continent as a crucial issue in Cold War politics, and both candidates sought the black vote, albeit carefully.

At first, Richard Nixon, the Republican vice president, had the edge. In 1957 he visited Liberia, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast during a good will tour of the African continent. Moreover, African Americans were still very involved in the Republican party; indeed, Nixon would garner more than thirty percent of the black vote in 1960. Many black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Sr. and Martin Luther King Jr., looked somewhat favorably upon the party and Richard Nixon’s candidacy.

As a United States Senator, the Democrat and Catholic John F. Kennedy was interested and involved in discussions regarding anti-colonialism and African independence and verbally supported those positions. He also served on the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Kennedy’s Catholicism wasn’t just a red flag to white voters; blacks were wary, too, especially those who were Baptists. Martin Luther King, Sr. readily admitted that he intended to vote against Kennedy based on the senator’s religion. The senior King remained firmly in the Nixon camp until his son was arrested and Robert Kennedy made a call to the judge who then had King released. Daddy King said, “I had expected to vote against Senator Kennedy because of his religion,” Daddy King said. “Now he can be my president, Catholic or whatever he is.” John Kennedy was said to be amused by the elder King’s comment and allegedly remarked, “Imagine Martin Luther King having a bigot for a father.” Kennedy received seventy percent of the African American vote.

Civil rights was the issue in American politics in 1963. Joseph does a masterful job in showing how crucial that year was to the African American freedom movement. He vividly walks us through the year as events and public officials’ response to them–for good or ill–move the country closer to freedom. While Joseph rounds up the usual suspects familiar to many Americans–Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, John and Robert Kennedy–he does unearth fresh insights about their work.

Joseph does a more thorough job than many books on the civil rights movement in telling the story of how the cultural icons of the day had a tremendous impact on the civil rights movement.  The actor Harry Belafonte, the singer Nina Simone, and the writer James Baldwin did yeoman-like work in the entertainment and literary communities, and their leadership garnered powerful allies for the movement. I was especially interested in Nina Simone. My late mother was a fan and I had heard her music when I was a very young girl. We see Simone become more political, angrier at injustice, and committed to the fight for racial equality throughout 1963. She would remain so throughout her life. The next year she would pen and sing her great protest anthem Mississippi Goddam.

Freedom Season deftly captures the urgency of 1963 and how the events and decisions made catapulted the country toward a more inclusive society.