5.75" x 8.5", 364 pages, original half sage cloth, original dust jacket.inscribed and signed by the author and Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, James Farmer, Ralph David Abernathy, Aaron Henry, and James L. Bevel, as well as Bayard Rustin and Wyatt Tee Walker. A landmark book with a remarkable collection of signatures.

Boyle was one of Virginia’s most prominent white civil rights activists during the 1950s and 1960s and author of the widely acclaimed autobiography The Desegregated Heart… Her views on desegregation evolved from being a proponent of gradual desegregation to a leading and often controversial white voice for immediate desegregation in public schools and in higher education. Her 1955 article for the Saturday Evening Post, titled ‘Southerners Will Like Integration,’ prompted a fierce backlash that included having a cross burned in her Charlottesville yard. Boyle did not moderate her views, however, and worked closely with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earning praise from Martin Luther King Jr., Lillian Smith, and others” (Encyclopedia Virginia). The achievements of King and Parks are well known. Baptist minister Ralph David Abernathy was a close friend of King’s and a fellow member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Abernathy was present when King was shot, accompanying him to the hospital. After King’s assassination, Abernathy tirelessly continued King’s nonviolent campaign for civil rights. James L. Farmer, Jr., was the organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride to end desegregation of inter-state transportation in the United States; he ran for Congress in 1968, losing to Shirley Chisholm, but was appointed by Richard Nixon as the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1969, a position he resigned a year later, frustrated by Washington bureaucracy. Aaron E. Henry, the son of sharecroppers, was the head of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP and chaired delegations to the 1968 and 1972 Democratic National Conventions. Baptist minister James L. Bevel was the Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education for the SCLC, spearheading three of the SCLC’s most successful campaigns: the 1963 Birmingham Children’s Crusade, the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, and the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He was credited as one of the early organizers of the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. A proponent of nonviolent resistance, Bayard Rustin helped organize the SCLC and was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After the passage of civil rights legislation, Rustin campaigned for improved economic conditions for impoverished African-Americans. Baptist minister Wyatt Tee Walker served as Chief of Staff for Martin Luther King, Jr. and was an early board member of the SCLC, becoming its first full-time Executive Director in 1960. In 1967 he became the Senior Pastor of the influential Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Haarlem, NY, a position he held until his retirement in 2004. In the 1970s, Walker served as Urban Affairs Specialist to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Second printing, issued in the same year as the first. The author’s inscription, on the half title, reads, “to Lois Chapman, with best wishes, Sarah Patton Boyle, September 27, 1963.” The other inscriptions include: “Freedom Now!! Rosa Parks,” “Best Wishes, Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Sincerely, James Farmer,” “Best Wishes, Ralph David Abernathy,” and “James L. Bevel, Atlanta, Ga.” Aaron E. Henry lists his Mississippi address below his signatures. Signatures only from Bayard Rustin and Wyatt Tee Walker.