Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement
By Elaine Weiss
Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025

Four seemingly ordinary Americans laid the groundwork for extraordinary change when they founded the Citizenship Schools project in the Jim Crow South of 1954. The project established more than 900 schools which taught tens of thousands of Black Southerners to read and write in order to pass the voter registration tests of the era. Their work nurtured a generation of activists, many of them women, who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, one of the project’s founders, “Mother of the Movement.”

Funded in part by the generous support of the American Association of University Women - Coastal Georgetown.

This event is presented in partnership with the Delaware Historical Society, Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice (SDARJ), and ACLU of Delaware. 

About the Author
Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. She is the author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote and Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of the Great War. Elaine lives with her husband in Baltimore where she loves exploring the Chesapeake on her kayak.

Purchase the book
Please help support local independent bookstores by purchasing this book at Browseabout Books, official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Online sources and digital versions are tempting; however, supporting local brick and mortar shops helps to preserve our vibrant main streets. Drop by Browseabout, order books online, or call the store at 302-226-2665. You also may purchase a copy at biblion in Lewes.

About the Festival
The History Book Festival is the first and only book festival in the United States devoted exclusively to history. With the help of our presenting funding partners — Delaware Humanities and The Lee Ann Wilkinson Group, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices | PenFed Realty — as well as our program and community partners, volunteers, and donors, the 2025 History Book Festival will be full of great discussions with authors of newly published narrative nonfiction and historical fiction. 

Thanks to all of our donors, especially our education and outreach funding partners: Ronald Collins & Susan Cohen, Carolyn & Aaron Nayer, Jen Mason & Clare Hancock, and Browseabout Books. HBF authors visit classrooms in Delaware, and HBF provides their books to schools, libraries, and community organizations.

Our Keynote event is presented by Griswold Home Care for Sussex and Kent Counties and Sally Mott Freeman & John K. Freeman; our Closing event is presented by the Delaware Community Foundation. Saturday’s Spirited Discussion, our gathering for attendees and presenters to celebrate and discuss their day, is presented by Dogfish Head Beer & Benevolence.

Special thanks to our Founding Program Partners for their continuing support: the Lewes Public Library, for event promotion and production, and Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach, official bookseller of the History Book Festival. Thanks also to the  Lewes Chamber of Commerce for event promotion, and the Cape Gazette and Delmarva Public Media, our media partners.